BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS
captured by Mr. Arnold Hodson in southwestern Abyssinia on November 15, 1925. Four of the models, of which one is represented in 5, were taken in the same locality on the same day.
It should be added that other nauseous butterflies are mimicked by other female forms of the same swallowtail, as well as by very different butterflies and by day-flying moths. Four out of the five Abyssinian mimetic females resemble 6, but the fifth, at Prague, exhibits the very different colouring of another model.
Examples could be multiplied indefinitely, but I believe that those here described afford sufficient evidence that predictions based on evolution are verifiable and have been verified, and that natural history becomes in the light of evolution a living and inspiring study.
Although there are widely different opinions about the causes of evolution, it is probable that no living student of nature has any doubt about the truth of Evolution.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Poulton, E. B. Colours of Animals. International Science Series. London, 1890.
- Poulton, E. B. Essays on Evolution. Oxford, 1908.
- Pycraft, W. P. Camouflage in Nature (London, 1926). (A good general account of the whole subject.)
- Thayer, A. H. Concealing-coloration in the Animal Kingdom. Macmillan Co., 1918, New York. A beautifully illustrated book on this aspect of the subject, containing a detailed account of Thayer’s great discovery of the meaning of the underside coloration of animals.
- Wallace, A. R. Darwinism. London, 1889.
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