Abstract
SOME time since I had occasion to study with care, for the purposes of a work on which I am engaged, the phenomena of mimetic analogy made known by Mr. Bates, which have lately formed the subject of discussion at the British Association, and in the pages of NATURE, in which I observe with pleasure that one of our body, Mr. A. W. Bennett, has borne an honourable part. Neither he nor any of the gentlemen who have written on the subject, have, however, so far as has come under my notice, brought the point to its real issue. They have accepted battle on the field on which Mr. Bates has placed it, and although they may have achieved a victory over him, they have not succeeded in rescuing the subject from its obscurity. He may be wrong without their being right. I am not surprised at their having been led to accept his premises; when I first approached the subject I did the same; but the longer I live and the more extended my experience becomes, the more surely do I find that when a theory looks shaky and unsound, the place to look for the flaw is not in the upper story, but in the basement. It is in the foundation that the crack will almost invariably be found. I am sure it is so here.
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MURRAY, A. Mimicry and Hybridisation . Nature 3, 154–156 (1870). https://doi.org/10.1038/003154a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/003154a0