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DESCRIPTIONS OF THREE NEW 
laid by another. No other explanation of this extraordinary 
state of affairs is so satisfactory as the hypothesis of mimetic 
resemblance, whether that of Bates, which claims the mimic 
to be an edible species living on the reputation of a distasteful 
species which it so closely resembles ; or the theory of Fritz 
Muller, which claims that each species gains by the evil reputa- 
tion of the other. Each of these hypotheses depends upon 
the great fact of natural selection : and it is claimed that the 
facts brought forward in this short paper show the reality of 
mimicry, and of the power of natural selection to enforce it. 
DESCRIPTIONS OF THREE NEW AFRICAN WEAVER- 
BIRDS OF THE GENERA ESTB1LDA AND 
GBANATINA. 
By Edgar A. Mearns, Associate in Zoology, United States 
National Museum. 
Beprinted from the ( Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections / 
Vol. 61, No. 9. Washington, July 31, 1913. 
This paper is the nineteenth dealing with the results of 
the Smithsonian African Expedition under the direction of 
Col. Theodore Roosevelt. It includes one new form from the 
collection of the Childs Frick African Expedition. 
The names of special tints and shades of colours used in 
this paper conform to Robert Ridgwav’s ‘ Colour Standards 
and Colour Nomenclature/ issued March 10, 1913. All 
measurements are in millimetres. 
Estrilda rhodopyga polia, new subspecies 
(Gato Waxbill) 
Type- specimen . — Adult male, Cat. No. 247,436, U.S. National 
Museum ; collected on the Gato River, altitude 4,000 feet, 
Southern Abyssinia, May 2, 1912, by Edgar A. Mearns. 
(Original number, 21,687.) 
Characters . — Similar to Estrilda rhodopyga rhodopyga from 
