The above-mentioned insect is a dweller in trees, and one might have supposed that a general resemblance to the leaves among which it moves would have been a sufficient protection for it. This probably was the beginning of the deception, which became more complex as time went on. In the leaf-like back of the insect we see probably the original disguise, but as the eyes of birds became more acute they began to pierce through it, more especially when the creature walked. Round about the would-be leaf, however, the leaf-cutting ants—distasteful to the birds that so affected it—were constantly moving and walking. If only it could get to resemble one of these it might be as active as it pleased, and especially if its motions, as well as its appearance, became ant- or ant and leaf-like. And this, indeed, was what gradually began to take place. Variation was always going on, and natural selection was always at hand to mould and shape its results. The two insects were, to begin with, of much the same size, and the general leaf-like appearance of the one was a good basis on which the more particular resemblance to the cut piece of leaf, carried by the other, might be founded. A few deeper washes of brown, some not very profound modifications of contour, and an ant-suggesting legs and body began to appear beneath it. Meanwhile, however, hundreds of thousands—nay, millions—of bad or mediocre copies were swept away, the species became rarer and rarer—trembled, perhaps, on the verge of extinction; but just when it might have appeared to the birds, who were no longer able to obtain a once much-enjoyed morsel, that it really was extinct, it was saved; nature’s object had been gained. A certain number of individuals were left, were close at hand even; even now, at that very moment, one might be crawling on the same twig where a despondent bird sat, only it was not to be distinguished from a leaf-cutting ant. Such are the ways of nature, such the slaughter that attends her victories.