348 TEE DESCENT OF MAN. 



CHAPTER XL 



INSECTS, continued. ORDER LEPIDOPTERA. 

 (BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS.) 



Courtship of butterflies Battles Ticking noise Colors common to 

 both sexes, or more brilliant in the males Examples Not due 

 to the direct action of the conditions of life Colors adapted for 

 protection Colors of moths Display Perceptive powers of the 

 Lepidoptera Variability Causes of the difference in color 

 between the males and females Mimicry, female butterflies more 

 brilliantly colored than the males Bright colors of caterpillars 

 Summary and concluding remarks on the secondary sexual char- 

 acters of insects Birds and insects compared. 



IN this great order the most interesting points for us are 

 the differences in color between the sexes of the same 

 species, and between the distinct species of the same genus. 

 Nearly the whole of the following chapter will be devoted 

 to this subject; but I will first make a few remarks on one 

 or two other points. Several males may often be seen pur- 

 suing and crowding round the same female. Their court- 

 ship appears to be a prolonged affair, for 1 have frequently 

 watched one or more males pirouetting round a female 

 until I was tired, without seeing the end of the courtship. 

 Mr. A. G. Butler also informs me that he has several times 

 watched a male courting a female for a full quarter of an 

 hour; but she pertinaciously refused him, and at last set- 

 tled on the ground and closed her wings, so as to escape 

 from his addresses. 



Although butterflies are weak and fragile creatures, they 

 are pugnacious, and an Emperor butterfly* has been capt- 

 ured with the tips of its wings broken from a conflict with 

 another male. Mr, Oollingwood, in speaking of the fre- 

 quent battles between the butterflies of Borneo, says: " They 



*Apatura Iris: "The Entomologist's Weekly Intelligence," 1859, 

 p. 139. For the Bornean Butterflies, see C. Collingwood, " Rambles 

 of a Naturalist," 1868, p. 183. 



