NOTES ON ARCTIA LDBRICIPEDA. 77 



apparent I captured 500 nearly full-grown larvae in August, 

 1867. It would have been easy to have taken 1000. 



There are two varieties of the caterpillar: one whitish, 

 with gray hairs ; the other yellowish, with red-brown hairs, 

 sometimes so red as to remind one of the caterpillar of 

 Arctia fuliginosa. The gray variety occurs in the pro- 

 portion of four to one of the red. The colour does not 

 indicate sexual distinction. 



Larvae captured, 500. Moths bred — perfect 106, crippled 

 20 (males 70, females 56) ; died in larva state, some partially 

 changed to pupa, 90 ; died in pupa, 84 ; produced Tachina 

 ccesia, 164; produced small ichneumon, 2 ; unaccounted for 

 (escaped, or possibly thrown out with old food), 34 = 500. 



If it may be assumed that no increase in the number of 

 the perfect insect takes place under ordinary circumstances 

 from year to year in a given locality, my 126 moths must be 

 the final produce of a siniilar number of moths of the 

 previous year, say 60 of each sex ; and as each female of 

 Arctia lubricipeda lays on the average 150 eggs (as was the 

 case where 1 counted half a dozen lots), it will result that, of 

 the 9000 larvae produced by the 60 female moths of 1876, 

 only 500, or 5^ per cent., became full-grown caterpillars, 

 and 106, little over 1 per cent., perfect moths, leaving, if we 

 count the cripples, the enormous number of 8874 larvae, or 

 99 per cent., to have perished at various stages of growth. 

 Terrible as it seems this is no exceptional case ; the vast 

 over-production- and early destruction of life is the rule 

 throughout Creation : life seems to be the most worthless 

 thing which God makes, if we may judge from the base uses 

 to which it is put. Proud man himself is no exception to the 

 universal laws, though he may mitigate its force. Of 800,000 

 children born every year in Great Britain, 120,000 die in the 

 first year; and in London one-fourth of all children born die 

 before they are a month old. (See Sir Charles Lyell's 

 ' Antiquityof Man,' p. 503.) 



This, although awful to contemplate, is no doubt a much 

 smaller rate of mortality than in the case of Luhricipeda ; 

 but man has not yet reached the point where his increase is 

 checked by the impossibility of finding food or unoccupied 

 space. His time will doubtless come ; but so far as present 

 experience goes the process of thinning his race by over- 

 crowding or starvation is not a promising one, either for the 

 improvement oi the breed or the evolution of a higher Ibrm, 

 although it may be dignified by the name of Natural 

 Selection. 



