This process of rendering generic the particular items of a widening experience has a marked effect in the development of the conscious situations in the light of which behaviour is intelligently guided. It is not the master holding this whip or that ball which suggests to the dog a hiding or a scamper; it is a generic situation with interchangeable details. It is not this, that, or the other previously unseen cat that at once determines the situation for the fox terrier; the particular animal has never entered into his past experience: it is the fulfilment of the essential conditions of the generic image that is operative in behaviour. The experience of animals must inevitably become in large degree generic by the elimination of the unessential and survival in re-presentative consciousness of the salient elements in many slightly diverse situations. Stated in terms of this conception, the familiar phenomena of mimicry are due to the fact that the mimicking form accords sufficiently well with the generic image to carry the same suggested meaning. As is well known, the model has been proved in many cases to be unpalatable or hurtful, while the mimic is in itself neither the one nor the other. The drone-fly, _Eristalis_, mimics the drone. And it has been urged that this cannot be a true case of mimicry, since the drone is harmless, though the female and “neuter” bees are possessed of stings. But I have satisfied myself by experiments with young birds, that (1) after experience with bees drones are avoided, and (2) that after similar experience drone-flies are also left untouched. Hence it seems that all three fall within the same generic image, the points of resemblance outweighing the differences in detail--as they do, indeed, with many men and women.