had been thrown on the camp fire clinging to a lichen-covered log, and so well carried out was the illusion that even the natives were deceived till the culprit betrayed its quality by erecting its gauzy wings. But it would be tedious to recount further the divisive ways of these arch-deceivers, and I shall only refer to another mimetic form, which for cool Pharisaism takes the palm from every creeping or flying thing. I first saw this _menteur à triple ètaye_ on the Tanganyika plateau. I had lain for a whole week without stirring from one spot--a boulder in the dried-up bed of a stream, for this is the only way to find out what really goes on in nature. A canopy of leaves arched overhead, the home of many birds, and the granite boulders of the dry stream-bed, and all along the banks, were marked with their white droppings. One day I was startled to see one of these droppings move. It was a mere white splash upon the stone, and when I approached I saw I must be mistaken; the thing was impossible; and now it was perfectly motionless. But I certainly saw it move, so I bent down and touched it. It was an animal. Of course it was as dead as a stone the moment I touched it, but one soon knows these impostures, and I gave it a minute or two to become alive--hastily sketching it meantime in case it should vanish through the stone, for in that land of wonders one really never knows what will happen next. Here was a bird-dropping suddenly become alive and moving over a rock; and now it was a bird-dropping again; and yet, like Galileo, I protest that it moved. It would not come to, and I almost feared I might be mistaken after all, so I turned it over on its other side. Now should any sceptic persist that this was a bird-dropping I leave him to account for a bird-dropping with six legs, a head, and a segmented body. Righting the creature, which showed no sign of life through all this ordeal, I withdrew a few paces and watched developments. It lay motionless on the stone, no legs, no head, no feelers, nothing to be seen but a flat patch of white--just such a patch as you could make on the stone in a second with a piece of chalk. Presently it stirred, and the spot slowly sidled across the boulder until I caught the impostor and imprisoned him for my cabinet. I saw in all about a dozen of these insects after this. They are about half the size of a fourpenny-piece, slightly more oval than round, and as white as a snowflake. This whiteness is due to a number of little tufts of delicate down growing out from minute protuberances all over the back. It is a fringe of similar tufts round the side that gives the irregular margin so suggestive of a splash; and the under surface of the body has no protection at all. The limbs are mere threads, and the motion of the insect is slow and monotonous, with frequent pauses to impress surrounding nature with its moribund condition. Now, unless this insect with this color and