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SAVAGE SUDAN 
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£ec/Wfcon\ 
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Moisture in arid Africa, however exiguous, forms a veritable 
lodestone to the insect-world—as to every other. Wherever 
the tiniest tricklet - provides moistened margins, thereat will be 
found assembled swarms of bright-winged butterflies—small 
blues and brimstones chiefly—which rise at one’s feet in clouds; 
though elsewhere never another will be seen in a long day’s 
march. Even blood appeals. It is striking —not to say 
revolting—-when some big beast is being “gralloched,” to 
watch these delicate beauties assembling to revel in gore. 
Many butterflies assimilate in marvellous degree with the 
surfaces upon which they habitually alight. There is in Africa 
a speckled brown species, not unlike our wood-argus (Hipparchia 
cegeria) but “ mud-coloured ” on both surfaces to perfection, and 
it invariably settles on bare mud! Still more accentuated is 
this assimilation in the under -surfaces of very many butterflies. 
These facts are patent even to superficial observation; but the 
deduction that assigns their origin to “colour-protection” is 
probably no less superficial. Against what enemies are butter¬ 
flies assumed to be “protected”? 
In his African Nature Notes (1908), SELOUS first pointed 
out that birds, as a rule, do not prey on butterflies—or, to be 
more precise, that during his lifelong experience in Africa he 
had never seen a bird attack a butterfly. Upon first reading 
this statement, while yet in manuscript—(parenthetically I may 
record the pride I now feel that my dear old friend should 
have asked me to revise these chapters ere yet they had 
appeared in print)—it at once struck me as startling; yet casting 
back in mental retrospect, I could then only recall a single 
exception to the rule stated. During more than a decade which 
has since elapsed I have paid special attention to the point both 
at home and abroad, with the result that, while in Northumber¬ 
land, I have thrice seen birds attack butterflies, or simulate an 
attack—no such occurrence has ever come under observation 
in Africa. Butterflies, in that continent, are practically immune 
from attack by birds. 
The mantis habitually preys on butterflies, and so do lizards. 
The former (which is itself admirably assimilated to its 
environment) succeeds solely by patient statuesque immobility 
—awaiting the arrival of a victim by some attractive bloom : 
