6o8 
| ' ‘ 
Color and Pattern and their Uses 
noted that the “great majority [of these injuries to the wings] are inflicted 
at the anal angle and adjacent hind margin of the hind wing, a considerable 
number at or near the apical angle of the fore wing, and comparatively few 
between the points.” In this fact, coupled with the fact that the apical 
and hind angles of the fore and hind wings respectively are precisely those 
regions of the wings most usually specially marked and prolonged as angular 
processes or tails, Poulton sees a special significance in the patterns of these 
wing-parts: he thinks they are “directive marks which tend to divert the 
attention of an enemy from more vital parts.” It is obvious that a butterfly 
can very well afford to lose the tip or tail of a wing if that loss will save losing 
a head or abdomen. Poulton sees a “remarkable resemblance of the marks 
and structures at the anal angle of the hind wing, under side, in many 
Lycaenidae to a head with antennae and eyes,” and recalls that this has been 
independently noticed by many other observers. “The movements of the 
hind wings by which the 1 tails,’ the apparent antennae, are made continually 
to pass and repass each other add very greatly to this resemblance.” 
Mimicry.—Of all the theories accounting for the utility of color and 
pattern, that of mimicry demands at first thought the largest degree of credulity. 
As a matter of fact, however, the observation and evidence on which it rests 
are as convincing as are those for almost any of the offered explanations 
of the usefulness of color-pattern. Although the word mimicry could often 
have been used aptly in the account of special protective resemblance, it 
has been reserved for use in connection with a specific kind of imitation, 
namely, the imitation by an otherwise defenceless insect, one without poison, 
beak, or sting, and without acrid and distasteful body fluids, of some other 
specially defended or inedible kind, so that the mimicker is mistaken for 
the mimicked form and, like this defended or distasteful form, relieved from 
attack. Many cases of this mimicry may be noted by any field student of 
entomology. 
Buzzing about flowers are to be found various kinds of bees, and also 
various other kinds of insects, thoroughly bee-like in appearance, but in 
reality not bees nor, like them, defended by stings. These bee-mimickers 
are mostly flies of various families (Syrphidae, Asilidae, Bombyliidae), and 
their resemblance to bees is sufficient to and does constantly deceive collectors. 
We presume, then, that it equally deceives birds and other insect enemies. 
Wasps, too, are mimicked by other insects; the wasp-like flies, Conopidae, 
and some of the clear-winged moths, Sesiida5 (Fig. 794), are extremely wasp¬ 
like in general seeming. 
The distasteful monarch butterfly, Anosia plexippus , wide-spread and 
abundant—a “successful” butterfly, whose success undoubtedly largely 
depends on its inedibility in both larval and imaginal stage—is mimicked 
with extraordinary fidelity of detail by the viceroy, Basilarchia archippus 
