Dear Sir,

I enclose the specimens which you were good enough to send me with Fritz Müller’s letter & beg to thank you for your kindness in lending them to me.¹ Mr. Butler² has looked over them & named them for me— should you ever require to allude to these butterflies it may be useful to you to have their names which are as follows: —³

You will at once perceive on referring to the letter that F. Müllers view concerning III 8—becomes untenable when this specimen is made a distinct sp. as Mr. Butler believes it to be.¹⁰

And now I have a few facts to communicate which may possibly be of service to you on some future occasion. First as regards the numerical proportion of varieties among plants under cultivation. Mr. Butler informs me that he sowed one pennyworth of seed of the “Canterbury Bell”¹¹ from which he raised over 150 plants. Of these only 5 presented structural variations: one had the bell half as long again as in the normal type, 3 had double & one treble bells one within another. The next fact relates to “prepotency of transmission.” A friend of mine in Twickenham crossed the Bramah (cock) with the “Silver-Spangle” (hen) & the mongrel offspring (exactly like one another), all resemble the father to a very much greater extent than the mother.¹²

There is one point concerning mimicry about which I should much like to have your opinion before venturing to publish anything on the subject. You state your belief (Descent &c) that when the process first began the mimicking & the mimicked forms were probably nearer to their common progenitor & consequently the incipient variations would not have been required so large as supposed. The imitated species afterwards diverging would lead its mimic along the same line so that the latter might come to differ to any extent from the allied species of its genus. Now on this view should we not be right in inferring à priori that the mimic would be allied to its model in more structural characters than mere colour & form? For, if the mimic & the model were nearer to their progenitor when the imitation was first set up they must have been allied to each other in structural characters more closely than are the other species of both genera (mimicked & mimicking) at the present time & as the mimic on your view has preserved its resemblance to the model species from that remote period when they were more closely allied to the present time when divergence has gone on in both genera, one would expect to find that more than superficial resemblance obtained, in some cases at least, between a species & its mimic. Now if this could be proved it would I venture to think, be an absolute demonstration of your view & would effectually answer those naturalists who are continually clamouring about incipient stages. I am therefore endeavouring to collect evidence on this head. Mr. Butler in his paper on the genus Elymnias (Proc. Zoo. Soc. June 1871) states (p. 519)¹³ that he finds “that some of the species differ so considerably from the type form in the neuration of the hind wings that it will be advisable to separate them as a distinct genus; whilst others exhibit differences of a less marked character, such as will only serve in an imperfect manner to separate the smaller sections of the group. I have noticed that this transitional state of things often occurs in genera largely acted upon by mimicry”

I think this interesting fact should throw some light on the subject. Again, Mr. Trimen has recorded (Trans. Linn. Soc. Vol. XXVI p. 519) the fact that Papilio Ridleyanus mimics Acræa Egina in colour of palpi.¹⁴ These are all the facts that I have as yet been able to collect.

With expressions of gratitude for the assistance which you have so kindly rendered in the preparation of my essay on mimicry. | I remain, | Yours very respectfully, | Raphael Meldola.

P.S. | I am much indebted to you also for permitting me to make use of F. Müller’s facts— they are very important as bearing on the question of the possibility of the conversion by natural selection of one form of inheritance into the other. I allude to the series of Leptalis Melite III. 2–7-& 10–11