From Raphael Meldola   3 May 1878

Collection Litolff | Enoch Père & Fils Editeurs de Musique | 27, Boulevard des Italiens, 27 | Paris | Maison à Londres | 19, Holles Street. W. | Chez M. N. Astruc | 7 Rue Blanche | Paris,

May 3/78

My dear Sir,

I must beg you to excuse my apparent neglect in not answering your letter of April 17th. sooner but I have been detained in Paris on business connected with the Exhibition & your letter has only just reached me.1

I am exceedingly obliged to you for the photographs & will exhibit them at the next meeting of the Entom. Soc.2 I will get the moths named immediately on my return with the greatest pleasure & communicate the names to you.3

I hope to return to London next week.

Fritz Müller’s observation on the relative abundance of mimicking & mimicked species opens out some important questions in the theory of mimicry—4 I had already collected a number of observations bearing on this phase of the question & as soon as I can find time I propose to organize them for publication.

Believe me, dear Sir, | Yours very faithfully | R. Meldola.

1
See letter to Raphael Meldola, 17 April 1878. The Exposition Universelle was held from 1 May 1878 to 10 November 1878 (EB). Meldola had brought specimens of a new green dye he had discovered, which was exhibited under the trade name ‘Viridine’ (Meldola 1882, p. 187).
2
CD had received photographs of two species of leaf-mimic katydids, probably Pterochroza illustrata (a synonym of Tanusia illustrata) and P. ocellata (peacock katydid), from Otto Zacharias (see letter to Raphael Meldola, 17 April 1878 and n. 2, and Proceedings of the Entomological Society of London (1878): xxiv).
3
Meldola had evidently mistakenly assumed that the insects in the photographs were moths (see n. 2, above).
4
CD had sent Meldola the letter from Fritz Müller, 20 February 1878 (see letter to Raphael Meldola, 27 March [1878]). Müller had noted that, depending on where they were observed, some species could be seen as either the mimicking or the mimicked species.

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-11493,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-11493