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the sweets, and not for the liquid, of which there would be little re- 
inaining on the trees the day after the sugar had been put on. 
There may at first sight appear no very great stretch to connect 
the various sources of supply of the drink of butterflies into a regular 
series—flowers, sap, decaying fruit, the manure heap, water ; yet one 
hardly likes to suggest that these are only various sources from which 
the Lepidoptera obtain the requisite amount of fluids for their tissues. 
Still there is no reason why this should not be so, and it is quite 
probable that the Zhec/a w-album butterfly and Zygeenid moth are as 
much attracted to the luscious privet blossom by the supply of water 
that its nectar yields as by the sugar that is in solution. Yet we hardly 
like to say that this is so, and have a suspicion that the flowers are 
attractive rather from the sweets in the nectar, than the necessity of 
fluids for the system ; and the same suspicion holds good both for the 
attractive power of sap, decaying fruit, or midden heap. In what 
way ordure is attractive I have no suspicion, except that it seems to 
me that in Alpine districts it is the fluids that the insect imbibes. 
The drinking of water by certain species is beyond question. That 
they drink infinitely more than is required by their tissues under any 
possible conditions appears certain. Baron’s note already quoted is 
sufficient proof of this ; whilst we have known /olyommatus damon 
to sit for more than an hour motionless, except for the slight move- 
ments of sucking up and discharging the moisture almost con- 
tinuously. What this internal bath may really mean we cannot even 
surmise. 
Another important factor as to this drinking habit is a strange one ; 
the ‘‘ thirsty souls” are, so far as my own observations go, and so 
far as De Nicéville’s and Bates’ remarks show, almost entirely males. 
Why is this drinking habit confined to one sex, and why is it indulged 
in whilst the females are away egg-laying, or presenting the strange 
phenomenon of a perfectly different habit from that indulged in by 
their lords and masters? It is of course quite reasonable to suppose 
that, if a number of exact observations be made, females in small 
numbers de visit puddles, and pools, and streams for drinking pur- 
poses. Certain it is that females come to sugar equally with males, 
but this we take it is for food, and not for drink, and it is just in this 
that our difficulty les. We know that moths and butterflies that 
visit sugar, over-ripe fruit, and similar dainties are of both sexes. 
They come, it seems, for food ; but males alone seem to be attracted 
by pure water. Does their extra activity give them a greater need 
in this direction? and has a habit which was at first (and still is in a 
measure) a necessity become so pleasurable that excessive drinking 
has literally become a vice ? 
