Page:Florida Trails as seen from Jacksonville to Key West and from November to April inclusive.djvu/43

 Along with the monarch came now and then the viceroy. This too is a common enough Northern butterfly, so much like the monarch, though of another genus, that in flight neither I nor the insect-eating birds are likely to tell the two apart. The monarch is beautiful but not tasty, and the insect-eaters let him fly by on this account. Something about him does not agree with them. On the other hand, Basilarchia disippus, the viceroy, is delectable from the flycatcher's point of taste. But he escapes because he resembles the monarch. Hence many scientists say that the viceroy "imitates" the monarch for protection. In this I take it that they mean that he escapes because he resembles, not that he consciously assumes the colors of, the other insect. The survival of the fittest works inexorably, but without the consciousness of the individual. At any rate, the viceroy resembles the monarch very closely, though as a rule he is not so large.

The magnificence of the Florida monarch I find somewhat reflected in his viceroy, nevertheless, for the Florida viceroys seem to me larger and more richly colored than those of New England. This difference has led one authority on Southern butterflies to adopt a new name for this dissembler, calling the local Basilarchia disippus, Basilarchia floridensis. Then another came along and called him Basilarchia eros. But why?