68 A NEW ZEALAND NATURALIST'S CALENDAR. 



coast only one very conspicuous form, the so-called "Red 

 Admiral" (Vanessa gonerilla), is well known. But in the 

 drier inland districts numbers of small gaily -coloured 

 butterflies of prevailing lilac-blue, brown, and reddish 

 hues, are met with among the tussock and scrub of the 

 hillsides. Their eggs, laid among the vegetation close 

 down to the ground, will lie dormant till the heat of next 

 summer hatches them out. 



TV. 



In March, even more than in February, the season of 

 autumn fruits, the season of in-gathering has come, when 

 plant life, with that strange mysterious action which looks 

 so like reason that we use of it almost the language of 

 reason, begins to prepare for its period of rest, and when 

 man, taking advantage of this action, lays up for his own 

 use the stored treasures of the vegetable world. There is 

 present in every living organism a force which causes it to 

 make provision for the continuity of its kind. Its life-work 

 seems to be the perpetuation, not of its individual self, but 

 of its race, and all its powers are devoted to this work. 

 The law which stands out most prominently in the study of 

 living organisms is not the survival of the fittest in the 

 struggle for existence (prominent as that is), but the sacri- 

 fice of self for the benefit of the race. The deeper we look 

 into Nature's workings the more forcibly will this truth 

 appeal to us. 



It has been repeatedly pointed out that there are far 

 more individuals of all kinds, plants and animals alike, 

 born into the world than can possibly come to maturity, 

 and that there has thus arisen a fierce struggle for existence 

 which manifests itself in the production and development 

 of modifications of structure tending to the better equip- 

 ment of the individuals for their part in this struggle. 

 Innumerable myriads of organisms are all bending their 

 energies in the direction of the better waging of this 

 struggle. Whatever does not make for progress is severely 

 eliminated, while all that aids an organism in this life and 

 death contest tends to be increasingly developed. These 



