No. 390. ] SECURING INSECTS FROM BIRDS. 477 
of birds habitually preying upon butterflies. In fact the same 
question has been agitated in the discussion following the read- 
ing of Mr. Dixey’s most interesting paper at the London Ento- 
mological Society; and it was found that comparatively few 
members had ever seen birds take butterflies. In the eastern 
United States there have been hardly more than a dozen 
published records of birds seen in the act of taking butter- 
flies. In fact birds, so far as I have observed, seem to 
make no practice of giving chase to the butterflies that float 
about them as they busily catch other insects. In fact butter- 
flies seem to be avoided, whether they are indifferently colored, 
protectively colored or mimetic, or warningly colored. It is 
said by Wallace that our milkweed butterfly is imitated by 
Limenitis, which thus escapes capture; but, as none of our 
butterflies are persecuted, it seems strange if mimicry has 
actually been aimed at. Beddard has shown that there are 
difficulties in the theory of protective mimicry, from the fact 
that mimicking and mimicked forms are eaten, and that, in 
certain cases, instances of apparently useless mimicry occur. 
Beddard also shows some inconsistencies in the current inter- 
pretation of the theory of warning coloration. He shows that 
certain warningly colored papilio larvae have a habit of not 
relying on their warning coloration, but conceal themselves. 
He further concludes, in speaking of warning coloration: 
“There are so many other easier ways of defense, and one 
would imagine that the action of natural selection would pro- 
ceed along the line of least resistance.” Some criticism in 
a measure adverse to protective mimicry is brought out in a 
paper entitled “ Mimetisme,” by M. C. Piepers, in the Proceed- 
ings of the International Zodlogical Congress, 1895, pp. 460- 
476. The greatest piece of work in actually putting the pro- 
tective coloration theory to test has been accomplished by 
Frank Finn. The results of this investigation are published 
in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. LXVI, 
Part II, No. 4, 1897. The author performed hundreds of ex- 
periments in feeding birds with butterflies. Mimetic, warn- 
ingly colored, and non-protected butterflies were used. The 
birds employed included Liothrix luteus, Otocompsa emerisa, 
