June, 1857.] 
AY ebster : On Protective Mimicry. 
69 
necessary to complete the deception, form and color would fall far short 
of protecting. The point in dispute is as to whether these actions are 
of volition, and with the anticipation of protection to be derived there¬ 
from, or are they involuntarily, and to be classed with the blushing of a 
timid maiden when becoming suddenly confused, or the whitening of 
the face of the less timid, when brought suddenly face to face with what 
appears certain death ? The timid maiden is in no danger, and blushes 
not because she intended or wished to, but because she had no power to 
avoid so doing; while the frightened one was in danger, but equally 
unable to prevent a different change of color in her face, though no 
protection would result. If, as we suppose, the sense of pain decreases, 
as we descend in the scale of animal life, than the action that, with form 
and coloration, tend to deceive the enemy, must be made in order to 
escape destruction. A recent writer in Natural Science (Vol. IX, p. 
299) states that while sitting in a tree, rifle in hand, waiting for a tiger^ 
his attention was caught by a kind of slow cricket, which exactly re¬ 
sembled a small patch of gray lichen, skurrying round the trunk of a 
neighboring tree, with a lizard in full pursuit. “'Just as the lizard came 
up with it, the cricket, falling in with a slight depression in the bark, 
stopped dead and flattened itself out, and the lizard was utterly con¬ 
founded. There it stood, looking ludicrously puzzled at the mysterious 
disappearance of its prey, which was just under its nose.” Here we 
have a sense of danger, a fear of death, and an attempt to escape death 
by flight; and when still pursued, certain actions that rendered the pe¬ 
culiar coloration of the insect of greater life-saving value than flight, 
were employed. With no knowledge of its own resemblance to a patch 
of lichens, and equally ignorant of the protective value of this resemb¬ 
lance, would the insect not have continued to attempt escape by further 
flight? How did it know that the pursuer was an enemy? How did 
it become aware that, to receive the benefit of its appearance, it must 
stop, when it had before followed the opposite course ? If it had no 
knowledge of its appearance, how would it be able to separate one of 
the opposite sex from a patch of lichen? Without such a knowledge 
how can there be sexual selection at all ? 
Under the head of “A Case of Mimicry,” Prof. Otto Lugger, in 
Entomological News, Vol. VI, pp. 138.140, gives a quite similar case 
of protective mimicry, as observed by him in Marmopteryx gibbicostata 
Walk. Professor Lugger saw on an elm tree what appeared to be the 
remains of a moth that had apparently been left over from the dinner 
of a spider, and, recognizing it as new to his collection, like every 
