SOME OF THE "LOWER ORDERS" 197 



the most vigorous and energetic, the strongest-winged 

 or the most persevering wins her. How can there be 

 chance in this ? Natural Selection would here act, as in 

 birds, in perpetuating the strongest and most vigorous 

 males ; and as these would usually be the more highly 

 coloured of their race, the same results would be produced 

 as regards the intensification and variation of colour in 

 the one case as the other." 



Commenting on Darwin's interpretation of those cases 

 wherein the females are more brilliantly coloured than 

 the males, he insists that on his (Darwin's) theory 

 " throughout the whole animal kingdom the males are 

 usually so ardent that they will accept any female, while 

 the females are coy, and choose the handsomest males, 

 whence it is believed the general brilliancy of males as 

 compared with females has arisen." 



" Mr. Darwin admits," he continues, " that these bright 

 colours have been acquired for protection [because they 

 resemble those of species which from their disagreeable 

 taste are avoided by birds and other insect-eating enemies] ; 

 but as there is no apparent cause for the strict limitation 

 of the colour to the female, he believes that it has been 

 kept down in the male by its being unattractive to her. 

 This appears to me to be a supposition opposed to the 

 whole theory of Sexual Selection itself. For this theory 

 is, that minute variations of colour in the male are 

 attractive to the female, have always been selected, and 

 that thus the brilliant male colours have been produced. 

 But in this case he thinks that the female Butterfly had a 

 constant aversion to every trace of colour, even when 

 we must suppose it was constantly recurring during the 

 successive variations which resulted in such a marvellous 

 change in herself. But the case admits of a much more 



