242 DARWIN'S LETTERS TO R. TRIMEN 



15. 



April 14th [1868] DOWN. 



BROMLEY. 



KENT. S.E. 

 MY DEAR MB TRIMEN 



It is very kind of you to take the trouble of 

 making so long an extract, which I am very glad to 

 possess, as the case is certainly a very striking one. 

 Blanchard's argument about the males not smelling the 

 females, because we can perceive no odour, seems to me 

 curiously weak. It is wonderful that he sh d not have 

 remembered at what great distances Deer and many 

 other animals can scent the cleanest man. 1 



Many thanks for your Photograph, and I send mine, 

 but it is a hideous affair merely a modified, hardly an 

 improved, Gorilla, 



Mr [H.] Doubleday has suggested a capital scheme 

 for estimating the number of sexes in Lepidoptera, viz 

 by a German List, in which in many cases the sexes are 

 differently priced. 2 With Butterflies, out of a list of 

 about 300 Sp. and Vars. 114 have sexes of different prices, 

 and in all of them, with one single exception, the male 

 is the cheapest. On an average judging from price for 

 every 100 females of each species there ought to be 143 

 males of the same species. So I firmly believe that you 

 field collectors are correct. Nearly the same result with 

 Moths. 



1 The ' extract ' probably refers to an account of the males 

 of the Oak Eggar rnoth assembling to a box that had contained the 

 female (see p. 235 n. 1). Blanchard's argument was revived in 

 1894 by Prof. F. Plateau, who, finding the taste ('saveur reelle ') of 

 the larva, pupa, and imago of the Magpie moth (Abraxas grossu- 

 lariata) to be somewhat pleasant to his own palate, concluded 

 that it was not distasteful to insectivorous animals. This con- 

 clusion is opposed by the present writer in Tram. Ent. Soc. Land. 

 (1902), 405-14. 



2 Quoted by Darwin in Descent of Man, &c. (1874), 252. 



