ix] PAST AND PRESENT 105 



CHAPTER IX 



PAST AND PRESENT; THE MEANING OF THE STORY 



IN the previous chapter we recognised how the 

 seasonal changes in various species of butterflies 

 as observable in two or three generations, indicate 

 changes in the history of the race as it might be 

 traced through innumerable generations. The end- 

 less variety in the form and habits of insect-larvae 

 and their adaptations to various modes of life, which 

 have been briefly sketched in this little book, suggest 

 vaster changes in the class of insects, as a whole, 

 through the long periods of geological time. Every 

 student of life, influenced by the teaching of Charles 

 Darwin (1859) and his successors, now regards all 

 groups of animals from the evolutionary standpoint, 

 and believes that comparisons of facts of structure 

 and life-history of orders and classes evidently akin 

 to each other, furnish at least some indications of 

 the course of development in the greater systematic 

 divisions, even as the facts of seasonal dimorphism, 

 mentioned in the last chapter, give hints as to the 

 course of development in those restricted groups 

 that we call species or varieties. A brief discussion 



