48 the president's address. 



caterpillar does not raise the fore part of its body in the mode 

 common amongst the larva? of Sphingiclce, but withdraws the first 

 and second segment within the third, which becomes distended ; and 

 remains motionless. Weismann considers that this is to terrify an 

 assailant, and thinks that the third segment would look like an 

 enormous head with great glaring eyes, and would have a very 

 alarming effect : he tried putting the larva in a saucer in his 

 garden ; but the sparrows, after an inspection, thought discretion 

 the better part of valour and beat a retreat. Weismann suggests 

 that these eye-spots have been formed by survival of the fittest 

 out of the smaller ring-spots. It strikes one that when these eye- 

 spots were rudimentary at their first commencement they cannot 

 have had a very alarming effect ; also that the theory scarcely 

 explains the similar spots which sometimes exist on the posterior 

 segments, and that eye-spots are very like ring- spots which often 

 exist on nearly all the segments ; and that the withdrawal of the 

 anterior segments into the more posterior ones is common with 

 other caterpillars which have no eye-spots, and other arthropods 

 when alarmed, and may well serve for the protection of the head ; 

 also that lying still has a family-likeness to shamming-dead. It 

 must be admitted, however, that the ordinary rearing position of 

 Sphinx larva? when alarmed is probably a threatening attitude. 

 Weismann does not say whether he tried if sparrows would eat 

 other equally large larva?. The other two instances I will take 

 from papers recently read before our own Scientific Societies. A 

 zoologist lately submitted to the Zoological Society that the comb 

 of the cock, and other male gallinaceous birds, was beneficial to the 

 species because the males were in excess of the females ; and in the 

 conflicts of the males the comb was a very attackable part, and 

 enabled them to kill each other more frequently than they would 

 do were it absent. We might at first think that the apparent 

 scarcity of the female is due to its more sombre colour, more stay- 

 at-home habits, and to such remarkable provisions for concealment 

 in the females of ground-nesting birds as the loss of scent at the 

 time of incubation, which causes a pointer to pass close by a sitting 

 pheasant without discovering it ; but Indian ornithologists agree 

 that the disproportion in the number of males to females is greater 

 than these causes will account for; while poultry-keepers usually 

 prefer having three hens to one cock ; but it seems difficult to see 

 how the comb-theory can operate, as, according to it, the cock with 



