Of course, the playful pipe-fish is by no means alone in his assumption
of so neat and effective a disguise. Protective resemblances of just the
same sort as that thus exhibited by this extraordinary little creature
are common throughout the whole range of nature; instances are to be
found in abundance, not only among beasts, birds, reptiles, and fishes,
but even among caterpillars, butterflies, and spiders, of species which
preserve the strictest incognito. Everywhere in the world, animals and
plants are perpetually masquerading in various assumed characters; and
sometimes their make-up is so exceedingly good as to take in for a while
not merely the uninstructed ordinary observer, but even the scientific
and systematic naturalist.
A few selected instances of such successful masquerading will perhaps
best serve to introduce the general principles upon which all animal
mimicry ultimately depends. Indeed, naturalists of late years have been
largely employed in fishing up examples from the ends of the earth and
from the depths of the sea for the elucidation of this very subject.
There is a certain butterfly in the islands of the Malay Archipelago
(its learned name, if anybody wishes to be formally introduced, is
_Kallima paralekta_) which always rests among dead or dry leaves, and
has itself leaf-like wings, all spotted over at intervals with wee
speckles to imitate the tiny spots of fungi on the foliage it resembles.
The well-known stick and leaf insects from the same rich neighbourhood
in like manner exactly mimic the twigs and leaves of the forest among
which they lurk: some of them look for all the world like little bits of
walking bamboo, while others appear in all varieties of hue, as if
opening buds and full-blown leaves and pieces of yellow foliage
sprinkled with the tints and moulds of decay had of a sudden raised
themselves erect upon six legs, and begun incontinently to perambulate
the Malayan woodlands like vegetable Frankensteins in all their glory.
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