200 THE MALAYAN PAPILIOXIDM, ETC. 



received little attention till Mr. Darwin showed how 

 important an adjunct it may become towards a true 

 interpretation of the history of organized beings, and 

 attracted towards it some small share of that research 

 which had before been almost exclusively devoted to 

 internal structure and physiology. The nature of spe- 

 cies, the laws of variation, the mysterious influence 

 of locality on both form and colour, the phenomena of 

 dimorphism and of mimicry, the modifying influence 

 of sex, the general laws of geographical distribution, 

 and the interpretation of past changes of the earth's 

 surface, have all been more or less fully illustrated 

 by the very limited group of the Malayan Papilio- 

 nidso ; while, at the same time, the deductions drawn 

 therefrom have been shown to be supported by analo- 

 gous facts, occurring in other and often widely-sepa- 

 rated groups of animals. 



