We thus see that the facts, wherever we scrutinize them carefully, harmonize with the theory. Of course we can only penetrate to a certain depth with the theory of selection, and we are still far from having reached the fundamental causes of the phenomena. Indeed, our understanding must in the meantime stop short before the causes of variations and their accumulation, but up to that point the theory gives us clearness, and discloses the causal connexion of phenomena in the most beautiful way. Although we do not yet understand how the southern female _Papilio turnus_ was able to produce the advantageous black, we do see why a black variation, when it did occur, should increase and be strengthened, until it crowded out the yellow form from the area of the immune model, and we are able in a general way to refer the whole complicated phenomena of mimicry to their proximate causes. This is true also of other phenomena which have had no part in establishing the theory, since attention was only directed to them later, and it is true even of some which, at first sight, seem to contradict the theory altogether. To this class belongs, for instance, the phenomenon that immune species not unfrequently mimic each other, as was first observed among the Heliconiid-like butterflies of South America. In four different families, the Danaidæ, the Neotropidæ, the Heliconiidæ, and the Acræidæ, there are species, distributed over the same area, which resemble each other in their conspicuous colouring and marking, and also in the peculiar shape of the wings. After what has been said one might be inclined to regard one of these species as the unpalatable model and the others as the palatable mimics, but they are all unpalatable, and are not eaten by birds. The puzzle of this apparent contradiction was solved by Fritz Müller[4], who pointed out that the aversion to non-edible butterflies is not innate in birds, but must be acquired. Each young bird has to learn from experience which victim is good to eat, and which bad. If every inedible species had its particular and distinctive colour-dress a considerable number of individuals of each species would fall victims to the experiments of young birds in each generation, for a butterfly which has once been pecked at, or squeezed by the bill of a bird, is doomed to die. But if two inedible species which resemble each other inhabit the same area they will be regarded by the birds as one and the same, and if five or more inedible species resemble each other all five will present the same appearance to the bird, and it will not require to repeat on the other four the experience of unpalatability it has gained from one. Thus the total of five species will be no more severely decimated by the young birds than each of them would have been if it had occurred alone; the same number of victims of experiment, which are necessary every year in the education of the young birds, will, when all five