359 



with darker markings.* It is probable that in these 

 cases the males are thus rendered more conspicuous, and 

 more easily seen by the females while flying about in the 

 dusk. 



From the several foregoing facts it is impossible to admit 

 that the brilliant colors of butterflies, and of some few 

 moths, have commonly been acquired for the sake of pro- 

 tection. We have seen that their colors and elegant pat- 

 terns are arranged and exhibited as if for display. Hence 

 I am led to believe that the females prefer or are most 

 excited by the more brilliant males; for on any other sup- 

 position the males would, as far as we can see, be orna- 

 mented to no purpose. We know that ants and certain 

 Lam elli corn beetles are capable of feeling an attachment 

 for each other, and that ants recognize their fellows after 

 an interval of several months. Hence there is no abstract 

 improbability in the Lepidoptera, which probably stand 

 nearly or quite as high in the scale as these insects, having 

 sufficient mental capacity to admire bright colors. They 

 certainly discover flowers by color. The humming-bird 

 sphinx may often be seen to swoop down from a distance 

 on a bunch of flowers in the midst of green foliage; and I 

 have been assured by two persons abroad that these moths 

 repeatedly visit flowers painted on the walls of a room and 

 vainly endeavor to insert their proboscis into them. Fritz 

 Muller informs me that several kinds of butterflies in 

 S. Brazil show an unmistakable preference for certain 

 colors over others. He observed that they very often 

 visited the brilliant red flowers of five or six genera of 

 plants, but never the white or yellow flowering species of 

 the same and other genera growing in the same garden; 

 and I have received other accounts to the same effect. As 

 I hear from Mr. Doubleday, the common white butterfly 

 often flies down to a bit of paper on the ground, no doubt 

 mistaking it for one of its own species. Mr. Collingwoodf 



* It is remarkable that in the Shetland Islands the male of this 

 moth, instead of differing widely from the female, frequently resem- 

 bles her closely in color (see Mr. MacLachlan, " Transact. Ent. Soc.," 

 vol. ii, 1866, p. 459). Mr. G. Eraser suggests ("Nature," April, 

 1871, p. 489) that at the season of the year when the ghost-moth ap- 

 pears in these northern islands, the whiteness of the males would 

 not be needed to render them visible to the females in the twilight 

 night. 



f "Rambles of a Naturalist in the Chinese Seas," 1508, p, 182, 



