At Page 205
Of The First Volume Of This Work, I Have Described A Butterfly
Which, When At Rest, So Closely Resembles A Dead Leaf, That It
Thereby Escape The Attacks Of Its Enemies.
This is termed a
"protective resemblance." If however the butterfly, being itself
savoury morsel to birds, had closely resembled
Another butterfly
which was disagreeable to birds, and therefore never eaten by
them, it would be as well protected as if it resembled a leaf;
and this is what has been happily termed "mimicry" by Mr. Bates,
who first discovered the object of these curious external
imitations of one insect by another belonging to a distinct genus
or family, and sometimes even to a distinct order. The clear-
winged moth which resemble wasps and hornets are the best
examples of "mimicry" in our own country.
For a long time all the known cases of exact resemblance of one
creature to quite a different one were confined to insects, and
it was therefore with great pleasure that I discovered in the
island of Bouru two birds which I constantly mistook for each
other, and which yet belonged to two distinct and somewhat
distant families. One of these is a honeysucker named
Tropidorhynchus bouruensis, and the other a kind of oriole, which
has been called Mimeta bouruensis. The oriole resembles the
honeysucker in the following particulars: the upper and under
surfaces of the two birds are exactly of the same tints of dark
and light brown; the Tropidorhynchus has a large bare black patch
round the eyes; this is copied in the Mimeta by a patch of black
feathers.
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