The most careless observer can not fail to perceive that, though it seems a Hibernianism to say so, this creature resembles a plant much more than do many plants themselves. The peculiar leaf-like nervures, the presence of certain spots that look exactly like the tracks of diminutive leafboring or leaf-mining insects, as cunningly mimic the one kingdom as the beautifully mottled wings, thorax, head with eye-stalks, each set with a brilliant black dot for an eye, and the suggestions of limbs and antennæ of the flower, do the other. Below, on the right of the page, is an engraving of one of a class of insects popularly known as walkingleaves. They belong to the family of Phasmida, which afford at least as many instances of mimicry amid their members as do the orchids among their numerous species. The curious creature here represented is the Phyllium scythe. The peculiar leaf-like elytra, or anterior wings, and the singular manner in which the limbs are furnished with flattened appendages, serve to carry out the plant like aspect with a fidelity that no mere engraving, however carefully executed, lacking as it does the delicacy of texture and the color of nature, can adequately In the female, as in the specimen engraved, the wings are entirely absent; but only the females possess the wide veined wing-covers, which in the males are wanting, though the males, on the contrary, possess serviceable wings of their own, reaching to the extremity of the body. Not only do there exist flower-insects and leafinsects, but sticks and moss are mimicked with, if possible, more perfect and minute fidelity, by species of Phasmide in this part of the world. The walking-stick insect (page 867) so common in our way-side lanes and fence corners is probably as complete and perfect a reproduction of an object in the vegetable world as anywhere exists; the bit of twig, with its polished cylindrical internodes and nodes, from which start off smaller twigs, the unsymmetrical walk and postures, all render the mimicry so complete that we never fail to be astonished to find the thing endowed with animal life and voluntary motion. The moss-insect below is found in Nicaragua. The leaf-insect on the right, same page, is one discovered by Mr. Thomas Belt in the PHYLLIUM SCYTHE. same locality. Writing of it, he says: "Among the chontales none are more worthy of notice than the many curious species of orthoptera that resemble green and faded leaves of trees. I have already described one that looks like a green leaf, and so much so that it even deceived the acute senses of the foraging ants." Mr. Wallace, who has done more to enlarge our knowledge of mimetism in nature than any other person, and whose theories of the processes and causes of the phenomenon have been almost universally adopted, has discovered perhaps the most curious instance of protective resemblance yet known, in the butterfly Kallima paralikta, which belongs to the same group as the purple emperor, a common enough English butterfly. The upper surface of the wings, conspicuously marked as well may be, exhibits a broad band of intense orange on the fore-wings crossing a ground of its complementary color, a rich bluish-purple, which on the hind-wings is clouded with ashy gray. So showy and beautiful a creature immediately attracted the attention of the naturalist; but he found it impossible to capture a specimen, from the simple fact that when pursued it immediately vanished from sight. However carefully Wallace approached the spot where it had last been seen, he could never discover it until it would suddenly re-appear, and as the pursuit was renewed, again disappear. At last, however, he fixed upon the exact spot where it became invisible, and though for some time it was lost to sight, he at length discovered that it was close before his eyes, but that in its position of repose it so ex actly imitated a dead and faded leaf clinging to a stalk "as to almost certainly deceive the eye, even when gazing full upon it," says Wallace. The leaves of many tropical plants are pointed, and the ends of the upper wings of this butterfly terminate in a fine point, while the lower wings, bluntly rounded off, terminate in a short thick tail. A dark line ex actly repre STICK, MOSS, AND LEAF-MIMICRY OF INSECTS. twig seems to spring from it, while the body is supported by the middle pair of legs, which are inconspicuous amid the plant fibres and small twigs about it. A little notch hollowed out just at the base of the wings allows the head and antennæ to be sufficiently withdrawn to be quite concealed. As the nymph in the old classic myth to escape the god was transformed into a tree, and the magician in the fairy tale took on in succession the forms of a mossgrown log, a stone, and a cloud, to escape his enemies, a number of insect tribes, by means of not only such protective resemblances as have been here noticed, but many others, are preserved from total extinction. Sometimes, too, this object is accomplished by a superficial resemblance to another species, which enjoys, for some reason, special immunity from the attacks of enemies. As an illustration of this species of mimicry an engraving is given of a clear-winged moth, many species of which imitate bees with more or less exactness, and also of a mimetic bug, the lower figure (Spiniger luteicornis), and the wasp it resembles standing above it. It is to be observed that the movements as well as the shape and color of the insect imitated are mimicked. It is in every part colored like the hornet (Priocnemis) that it resembles. And as it ran about restlessly vibrating its brown semi-transparent wings, under the eyes of so emi nent a naturalist as Thomas Belt, it succeeded in completely deceiving him. It was captured as a wasp. It is hard for any one not committed to a theory to imagine what purpose of protection" or what "system natural selection" of can possibly account for the resemblance existing between a flower and a dove or a swan, or explain the process by which a blossom became the almost exact reproduction in external appearance of an insect, or why different orders of plants found in widely separated parts of the earth should not infrequently so exactly resemble each other as to deceive skillful botanists. Thus Sir William Hooker actually figured a veronica as a conifer; Kuntz, a great authority on ferns, supposed the curious Stangeria paradoxia, a cycad allied to the conifers, a true fern; and Dr. Berthold Seemann met in the Sandwich Islands with a variety of Solanum nel RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN PLANTS OF DIFFERENT FAMILIES. MOTH AND HUMMING-BIRD. sonii which he says "looked for all the world like Thomasia solanacea of New Holland-a well-known Buettnereaceous plant of our gardens." In the engraving on page 869 is represented a plant which, as Bennett well observes, irresisti bly "reminds us of a familiar cactus, but which in reality is a species of Stapelia allied to S. hirsuta, belonging to the order Asclepiadaceæ, and equally remote in any system of classification from Cactaceae and the Euphorbiaceæ." Equally striking, perhaps, is the remarkable recurrence in several orders of an almost identical external appearance of the fruit. The fruit of the maple, with its broad membraneous wing, is well known to our readers, but we have furnished in our illustration examples of four others, which in a popular article of this kind there is scarcely space, if there were occasion, to specialize farther than to state that they belong to separate and distinct natural orders, all large trees or shrubs, natives of South America and Africa, and possessing no structural affinity to each other. The remaining division of the illustration exhibits what perhaps is as nearly as possible a perfect identity in external appearance between a cactus (Rhipsalis funalis) and a euphorbiaceous plant (E. tirucalli), the first from tropical America, the other How often have my readers been deceived by the moths (Sesia) popularly and significantly called "humbugs," as, darting from flower to flower, they suddenly remain suspended, motionless, on whirring wings, and extend their flexible proboscis into the heart of the blossom with such an exact imitation of the habits and motions of humming-birds. Bates, the naturalist, to whom as an Englishman humming-birds are not so familiar, was much struck by the resemblance between the bird and insect, and graphically describes it. "Several times," he says, "I shot by mistake a humming-bird hawk-moth instead of a bird. This moth (Macroglossa titan) is somewhat smaller than hummingbirds generally are: but its manner of flight, and the way it poises itself before a |