CREATION BY EVOLUTION
panying illustration. In Madagascar and the Comoro Islands the pattern of the females is very like that of the males, and they also have tails. On the mainland of Africa, however, male-like females are known only in Abyssinia. In other parts of the continent the males are pale-yellow black-marked butterflies with long tails, but the females are entirely different, resembling quite different tailless butterflies that have an unpleasant taste and that bear conspicuous “warning” patterns. The commonest of these mimicking females is a black-and-white tailless form (4), and the butterfly which it resembles and is therefore called its “model” is represented in 5.
Now the evolutionist felt confident that these tailless mimicking females were derived from females that had tails like the males, and his confidence has received a three-fold verification.
The first verification was obtained about twelve years ago, when Dr. W. A. Lamborn discovered that the female chrysalises have pockets for the tails, although no tails are developed within them.
The second verification is found in the fact that underfeeding the caterpillar or subjecting the chrysalis to cold may result in the production of rudimentary wing-tails.
The last and most convincing verification is provided by the Abyssinian race of the swallowtail, in which the females are generally male-like, but some comparatively rare females have gained the mimetic pattern yet have not lost their tails. An example is shown in 6. The right tail is well developed, although the left one has been torn off, perhaps as a result of attack by some enemy. The specimen figured is one of five—two in the Prague Museum, one in Lord Rothschild’s Museum at Tring, and two at Oxford, the second having unfortunately lost both its tails. The figured specimen was
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