Queerer still than the caterpillars which pretend to be leaves or flowers for the sake of protection are those truly diabolical and perfidious Brazilian spiders which, as Mr. Bates observed, are brilliantly coloured with crimson and purple, but ’double themselves up at the base of leaf-stalks, so as to resemble flower buds, and thus deceive the insects upon which they prey.’  There is something hideously wicked and cruel in this lowest depth of imitative infamy.  A flower-bud is something so innocent and childlike; and to disguise oneself as such for purposes of murder and rapine argues the final abyss of arachnoid perfidy.  It reminds one of that charming and amiable young lady in Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘Dynamiter,’ who amused herself in moments of temporary gaiety by blowing up inhabited houses, inmates and all, out of pure lightness of heart and girlish frivolity.  An Indian mantis or praying insect, a little less wicked, though no less cruel than the spiders, deceives the flies who come to his arms under the false pretence of being a quiet leaf, upon which they may light in safety for rest and refreshment.  Yet another abandoned member of the same family, relying boldly upon the resources of tropical nature, gets itself up as a complete orchid, the head and fangs being moulded in the exact image of the beautiful blossom, and the arms folding treacherously around the unhappy insect which ventures to seek for honey in its deceptive jaws.

Happily, however, the tyrants and murderers do not always have things all their own way.  Sometimes the inoffensive prey turn the tables upon their torturers with distinguished success.  For example, Mr. Wallace noticed a kind of sand-wasp, in Borneo, much given to devouring crickets; but there was one species of cricket which exactly reproduced the features of the sand-wasps, and mixed among them on equal terms without fear of detection.  Mr. Belt saw a green leaf-like locust in Nicaragua, overrun by foraging ants in search of meat for dinner, but remaining perfectly motionless all the time, and evidently mistaken by the hungry foragers for a real piece of the foliage it mimicked.  So thoroughly did this innocent locust understand the necessity for remaining still, and pretending to be a leaf under all advances, that even when Mr. Belt took it up in his hands it never budged an inch, but strenuously preserved its rigid leaf-like attitude.  As other insects ‘sham dead,’ this ingenious creature shammed vegetable.

In order to understand how cases like these begin to arise, we must remember that first of all they start of necessity from very slight and indefinite resemblances, which succeed as it were by accident in occasionally eluding the vigilance of enemies.  Thus, there are stick insects which only look like long round cylinders, not obviously stick-shaped, but rudely resembling a bit of wood in outline only.  These imperfectly mimetic insects may often obtain a casual immunity from attack by being mistaken for