Mimicry versus Hybridity

Abstract

I AM rather surprised that Mr. Andrew Murray should have advanced his theory of mimicry being due to hybridisation, without adducing one solitary fact to prove that hybridisation between distinct families of insects ever occurs, or that, if it do occur, the offspring are fertile inter se. Mimicry is most frequent between very distinct families or higher groups, and often between different orders of insects. We may fairly consider that the “natural orders” of plants, as being the next well-marked groups above genera, are about equivalent to the families of insects, so that the analogy furnished by hybridisation among plants, on which alone Mr. Murray's theory is founded, wholly breaks down, unless he can show (which he has not done) that such hybridisation occurs between species of different “natural orders,” or of well-marked groups higher than genera. It would be mere waste of time to discuss the details of a theory whose fundamental assumption is not only quite unsupported by fact, but is diametrically opposed to the almost, if not quite, universal fact that hybrids do not occur between species of different families or higher groups.