166 Captain T. Hutton on the 
on returning home. There are indeed not wanting proofs that 
even where the food of one latitude exists in another, the insect 
will refuse to eat it, as if aware that it is no longer suitable to its 
wants! The truth seems to be this, that where a tree and an 
insect have existed together in, perhaps, a southern latitude, and 
the tree ceases to grow in some more northern locality where the 
insect is still found, it is because the tree in the colder locality 
would no longer be able to furnish a sufficiently stimulating diet, 
and is, therefore, replaced by one more suitable to the wants of 
the insect. And this after all is simply one of those wise pro- 
visions of nature whereby her productions and the conditions 
under which they exist are mutually adapted to each other. 
As a proof of this, we find that although the larve of the 
beautiful Aliacus Atlas are known in Kumaon to feed freely and 
principally upon the leaves of the yellow-flowering barberry 
(Berberis Asiatica?), called at Mussooree Russote, yet with us, 
where the plant is equally common, I have never yet succeeded 
in inducing the worm to touch it, nor have I ever found either 
the larvee or the cocoons upon this shrub. And yet out of forty- 
six cocoons now before me from Kumaon no fewer than forty- 
three have been spun among the leaves of B. Asiatica! Surely 
this looks like a case in point; besides which it is an unques- 
tionable fact that among the mulberry trees which are known to 
be true species, and not mere varieties, the leaves of those from 
the north possess far greater thickness, consistency and nourish- 
ment than those from the tropics or warm lowland provinces. 
Take for example the leaves of Morus multicaulis and of M. 
cucullata, as compared with those of M/. Sinensis, M. nigra ?, and 
the wild indigenous trees of the North Western Himalaya. 
At Pondicherry, according to information derived from my 
obliging correspondent M. Perrottet, the Actias Selene is entirely 
restricted to the Odina Wodier of Roxburgh, while at Mussooree 
it is polyphagous, feeding on Coriaria Nipalensis, Carpinus 
bimana, Andromeda ovalifolia, Cedrela paniculata, the common 
walnut, Cerasus puddum, or wild cherry, Pyrus variolosa, and 
several others. Again, Altacus Cynthia, which in China is 
nourished on the leaves of Ailanthus glandulosa, feeds in Cachar 
upon a tree called “ Lood,” and at Mussooree on Coriaria Nipa- 
lensis, Xanthoxylon* hostile and some others; and so on, indeed, 
throughout the family. 
* In previous papers this word has invariably appeared as Xunthophyllum, 
which is an error. 
