=Mimicry.=—In the island of Portland, a locality remarkable for the number of species peculiar to itself, there is found a spider, _Micaria scintillans_, very closely resembling a large blackish ant which frequents the same neighbourhood. Its movements, moreover, are exceedingly ant-like, as it hurries along in a zigzag course, frequently running up and down grass stems after the manner of those insects. It is a great lover of sunshine, and disappears as soon as the sun is obscured by a passing cloud. Such resemblances, obvious enough in nature, and heightened by the behaviour of the mimetic form, are often by no means striking in the cabinet. In some American species of spiders, however, imitation of the ant has passed beyond the stage of a general resemblance as regards size and colour and method of progression. The head of the ant is well marked off from the body, and the thorax is frequently divided into distinct regions. These peculiarities are imitated by constrictions in the cephalothorax of mimetic spiders. The resemblance, moreover, is much increased by their habit of using but six legs for locomotion, and carrying the second pair as ants do their antennae. The best known examples of these spiders are _Synageles picata_ and _Synemosyna formica_ (see Fig. 215, C, p. 420), and even more striking resemblances have been observed among some undescribed South American species. The object of such mimicry seems to vary in different cases. Sometimes the spider preys upon the ant which it resembles. Sometimes, again, by its disguise, it escapes the notice of the ant which would otherwise feed upon it. More often spider and ant are neutral as regards each other, but, under cover of its resemblance, the Arachnid is enabled to approach an unsuspecting victim to which the ant is not a terror. Again, the unpleasantly acid taste of ants is unpalatable to most birds, though not to all, and the increased danger from specially ant-eating birds may be more than counterbalanced by the immunity they acquire from other birds. There is quite a large class of Spiders of nocturnal habits, whose only precaution by day is to sit perfectly still and be mistaken for something else. We have referred to the adaptation in colour of our English species, _Misumena vatia_, to the flowers in which it lies in wait for prey. Bates[297] mentions exotic examples of the same family which mimic flower-buds in the axils of leaves. Herbert Smith says of a spider which sits upon a leaf waiting for prey: “The pink three-lobed body appears just like a withered flower that might have fallen from the tree above; to the flies, no doubt, the deception is increased by the strong sweet odour, like jasmine.”