SEP 1 1900 



THE EVOLUTION OF COLOUR IN LEPIDOPTEKA. 



NOTE I. 

 THE EVOLUTION OF COLOUR IN LEPIDOPTERA 



BY 



Mr. M. C. PIEPERS. 



At the Zoological Congress at Cambridge I imparted, 

 especially for the exclusively English speaking and read- 

 ing entomological public, some notions on this biolo- 

 gical phenomenon, the existence of which I think to have 

 discovered by studying the ontogenesis of caterpillars of 

 Sphingidae, and also in the imagines of several families of 

 Rhopalocera, more particularly in those of the Pieridae; 

 the results of these studies have hovs^ever been published 

 in German. Now, before the Transactions of that Congress 

 had been published, an article entitled » The Colours and 

 Pigments of Butterflies" by Miss M. I. Newbegin appeared 

 in the February number of » Natural Science", in which, 

 besides some other papers of these latter days on the same 

 subject, she also discusses my study on the colour-evolu- 

 tion of Pieridae. Although I have tried at the afore-named 

 Congress to disclose shortly the course of my observations 

 and the results thereof as clearly as possible, from what 

 Miss N. imparts I am afraid one must gather quite a false 

 idea of what I have said. It seems to me she has not read 

 my paper as carefully as might be desirable for anybody 

 writing an article about it, and as a matter of course her 

 judgment necessarily cannot be right. Since it is of the 

 greatest importance for me to be well understood, so that 

 other people may be led to submit my observations to a 



]Votes from tlie Leyden IMuseiiin, Vol. XXII. 



1 



