MlMlCliY. 355 



Similarly an explanation may be long deferred till one branch of 

 science is sufficiently advanced to illuminate another. Discoveries 

 in botany and entomology have often reacted on, and supple- 

 mented each other. Prof. Drummond has quoted an in- 

 stance which will serve our purpose here: — "More than two 

 thousand years ago Herodotus observed a remarkable custom in 

 Egypt. At a certain season of the year the Egyptians went into 

 the desert, cut off branches from the wild palms, and, bringing 

 them back to their gardens, waved them over the flowers of the 

 date palm. Why they performed this ceremony they did not 

 know ; but they knew that if they neglected it the date crop 

 would be poor or wholly lost. Herodotus offers the quaint 

 explanation that along with these branches came certain flies 

 possessed of a ' vivific virtue,' which somehow lent an exuberant 

 fertility to the dates. But the true rationale of the incantation 

 is now explained. Palm trees, like human beings, are male and 

 female. The garden plants, the date bearers, were females ; the 

 desert plants were males ; and the waving of the branches over 

 the females meant the transference of the fertilizing pollen dust 

 from the one to the other." * 



The time has arrived when the whole theory of " protective 

 resemblance " and (or) " mimicry"! requires to be expressed and 

 understood in two senses, viz. Demonstrated, and Suggested or 

 Probable. I propose also to give instances of what may be 

 considered as Disputed or Mistaken Mimicry, and likewise 

 Purposeless Mimicry. In considering these questions one is re- 

 minded of the three kinds of Phantasms as understood by the 

 Stoics. Those that were probable, those that were improbable* 

 and those that were neither one nor the other. Or perhaps still 

 better, the three categories of Kenan. " The first, which is 

 unfortunately very limited, is the category of certainties ; the 



* 'The Ascent of Man,' pp. 310-11. 



f The term "mimicry " is often considered as first applied in nature by its 

 great enunciator, H. W. Bates. Some years ago I pointed out (' Khopalocera 

 Malay ana,' p. 33, note) that Henfrey in 1852 had already used the term in 

 connection with botany. Mr. Scudder subsequently ('Butterflies E. U. States 

 and Canada,' vol. i. p. 710) showed that Kirby and Spence had anticipated 

 Henfrey in 1815. Boisduval also, in 1836, drew attention to the phenomena 

 (c/. Coe, ' Nature versus Natural Selection,' p. 1(51). 



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