As a result of these experiments Professor Wheeler concludes that “naturalists should be more careful in imputing nauseous or disagreeable qualities to some conspicuously coloured animals,” and he suggests that “if every field entomologist could only bring himself to repeat the writer’s experiment on one of many cases of ‘flaunted nauseousness’ and place his taste impressions on record, we should in the course of time have a really valuable body of evidence, for we can hardly assume that beasts, birds, and reptiles can find things ‘nauseous’ which are quite tasteless, or even pleasant, to the human palate.”[111] “_Il n’y a pas de réplique à cela_,” and how it is that so simple a plan did not occur to Mr. Bates during all the eleven years he was on the Amazon it is not very easy to imagine. On the whole, perhaps, it may be said that the reason why certain butterflies are imitated by other butterflies has not been so satisfactorily settled as the fact that they are so imitated. But, on the other hand, there is some—perhaps much—evidence of the truth of Bates’s theory, and, moreover, that theory is in itself so plausible that it seems to require a good deal of evidence to overthrow it. It is not only in South America that butterflies dress up like one another. Instances similar to those here given occur also in Africa and the Malay Archipelago, as well as in other parts of the world. There is even one doubtful case in England, both the copy and original being moths. Moths, especially the day-flying ones, are represented in these phenomena as well as butterflies, which are sometimes imitated by them. ----- Footnote 104: Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, pp. 100-2. Footnote 105: Forbes, A Naturalist’s Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago. Footnote 106: Trimen, Protective Resemblance and Mimicry in Animals. Footnote 107: “Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the Amazon Valley,” in _Transactions of the Linnean Society_, vol. 23, p. 495. Footnote 108: Belt, The Naturalist in Nicaragua, p. 109. Footnote 109: Ibid., pp. 316, 317. Footnote 110: Ibid., p. 109. Footnote 111: “Impostors among Animals,” in the _Century Magazine_, July, 1901. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXI Sights of the forest—A butterfly bridge—Bird-winged butterflies—“What’s in a name?”—Scientific sensibility—Resemblance _v._ mimicry—A convenient wrong word—Beauty in nature—Nuptial display—Strange counter-theory—_Lucus a non lucendo_—Reasoning by contraries—True in Topsy-turvydom—Butterfly courtship—Form and colour—A curious suggestion—Powers of defective eyesight.