XXIX. 



COLOR PREFERENCES OF BUTTERFLIES, AND THE 

 ORIGIN OF THEIR COLOR 



Darwin has maintained, as every one knows, 

 that the beauty of flowers depends very largely, 

 perhaps entirely, upon insects, the purpose of the 

 gayly colored corolla being to attract the insect to 

 the spot necessary for it to reach to effect fertili- 

 zation in the plant. The broad fact that flowers 

 fertilized by the wind are never gayly colored, 

 while there are others habitually producing two 

 kinds of flowers, one open, colored, and provided 

 with nectar to attract insects, the other closed, 

 uncolored, destitute of nectar, and never visited by 

 insects, seems to render this very clear. But we 

 still need to know how color originated in the 

 equally or more gayly colored butterflies which 

 visit flowers, which the poets have been wont to 

 compare to flowers afloat. The prevailing opinion 

 has been that this was due in the first instance, 

 as in the case of the birds, to sexual selection, 



