COLOUR IN LEPinOPTERA. 5 



established as yet that my observations and the conclu- 

 sions derived therefrom are erroneous ; that is vs^hy I think 

 I may accept the existence of this phenomenon as a scien- 

 tific fact. This induced me to go on trying to get at an 

 explanation of the difference in colour and the polymor- 

 phism of imagines of the Lepidoptera by the same means 

 that proved so satisfactory as to the phenomena of caterpil- 

 lars of Sphingidae. So that was what led me to write ray 

 paper — as I imparted at the late Congress. In no way 

 it is based on a loosely emitted hypothesis. 



1 regret to state that on the whole Miss N.'s verdict 

 on my work is remarkably superficial, else I think she 

 would not have expressed it in nearly the following terms: 

 the view that » scarlet is the most primitive colour in the 

 »Pieridae with the correlated statement that the males in 

 »the family are frequently more primitive in regard to 

 » their colours than the females, will be found somewhat 

 » difficult of acceptance by most." For in my study »üeber 

 die Farhe und den Polymorphismus der Spliingiden Raupen' ') 

 I have already named the fact that in many caterpillars red 

 indeed does not appear as the most primitive colour, but 

 still as one ontogenetically preceding the white colour, the 

 investigations of Dr. Grafin von Linden — of which I 

 shall speak later on — adding a strong support also in 

 reference to the imagines of many Rhopalocera to this 

 fact, indeed acknowledged and honestly mentioned by 

 Miss N., but of which she does not seem to grasp fully 

 the really great significance. As to the question of sexual 

 preponderance, her words in the first place do not exactly 

 render what I have said, and moreover this opinion of 

 mine is not so very strange or inadmissible. The oldest 

 and most generally adopted view in this matter, Darwin's 

 view, — the only one Miss N. seems to be acquainted 

 with — is that male preponderance always exists. But 

 this opinion did not remain unattacked. Prof. Dr. J. Kennel 



1) Tijdschrift voor Entomologie, XL, 1897. 



Notes from the Leyden Museum, Vol. XXII. 



