ON MIMICRY AND DECEPTION 
some of the writers have gone so far as to express a belief 
that this resemblance has been effected by the will and 
design of the creatures themselves : for instance, that a 
caterpillar can select for its hiding-place a spot upon which 
it assumes the cocoon state and assumes the colour of the 
surrounding object as a means of concealment ; much in 
the same way as the chameleon or many other reptiles and 
fishes. How far this may bo the case remains to be con- 
sidered ; but an equally remarkable resemblance may be 
found in organisms far below the vertebrate or invertebrate 
animal kingdom. In walking through the woods in Surrey 
or Sussex in the month of September, when the surface of 
the ground is covered with the clean-washed flints, it is 
difficult and almost impossible to distinguish the flints 
from a fungus that crops up among them, varied in form 
and presenting a whitish surface, and not only looking like 
a flint in its perfect state, but when broken up you may 
observe not only the thin white coating like the flint, but 
the black or dark-coloured inside, so closely resembling a 
flint in all but the hardness that one could not help call- 
ing to mind the remarks of others upon the so-called 
mimicry of one natural object to another. 
These resemblances are found abundantly in vertebrate 
animals, but among the lower forms they are endless. 
Many of the species of Polyzoa, for instance, assume the 
form and colour of sea-weed, moss, or corals. Again, 
among Orthoptera, we And in the family Pliasmidm, or stick 
insects, such wonderful likenesses to dry bits of stick, as 
almost pass belief, and are only equalled by the family of 
leaf insects, of which Phylliiimi scythe is a good example, 
not only in colour but form, which together with the veins 
and branching of the leaf are most singularly represented. 
In other instances, among insects we find the caterpillars 
of the family Ceometridm so closely imitating a part of the 
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