210 tHE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



yellow, red. In fact, to suppose that white occurs between yelloW 

 and red is to lend ourselves to utter absurdities. 



Furthermore, I have shown how closely allied are yellow and 

 chestnut : if, therefore, we suppose yellow anterior to white, 

 equally so must we place chestnut : and tlien we should be flying 

 in the face of all entomological evidence. We should have to 

 consider all the " sun-bleached" or milk-white varieties of the 

 chestnut species as progressive varieties to the higher stage of 

 white ! I do not think that any one who has ever compared a 

 natural or artificial "bleached" variety with the richly coloured 

 normal insect will give this contention a second thought. 

 Furthermore, we should be logically bound to consider the pale 

 (i. e., white) female of G. rhamni as a progressive advance on the 

 deep yellow of the male, and the white variety helice of Colias 

 edusa as an advance on the conspicuous orange of the type ; but 

 this is simply to meet the certain fate of being crushed by the 

 whole weight of biological evidence that shows the general 

 advance from pale to bright and conspicuous colours ; * indeed, 

 it scarcely seems worth while to follow this question further. I 

 may refer, however, to a passage in Wallace's ' Tropical Nature ' 

 (pp. 204, 205), in which he describes how in Pieris pyrrha, 

 molenka and lorena, the males are plain white and black, whilst 

 the females are orange, yellow, and black, and so banded and 

 spotted as to exactly mimic certain Heliconidse ; the gist of the 

 whole passage being that (in this case) the females have acquired 

 these yellow colours, whilst the males preserve their old markings : 

 what is this but advance from white to yellow ? Moreover, Mr. 

 Cockerell's own remarks on Euchloe cardamines are a condemna- 

 tion of himself; for, in a paper read before the South London 

 Entomological Society, he proposest the view that this genus has 

 arisen in comparatively recent times as an " offshoot from an old 

 Pieris stock," i. e., therefore that the orange and yellow colours 

 of this genus are derivative, and the white primeval ; not vice 

 versa. But it is possible that Mr. Cockerell may repudiate some 

 of the argumentsi that I have been combating here : it is possible 

 that he might conceive yellow to be the original colour from 

 which, on the one hand, red has been evolved by an alteration of 

 the pigment, and, on the other hand, white by a destruction 



* Except, of course, in cases where concealment is necessary. 



+ Entom. xxii. 143. 



I Since writing the foregoing I have turned up a note made some time since, 

 with a reference to the 'Entomologist ' (xxi. 113). There I see that Mr. Cockerell 

 apparently does propose to so derive red from yellow, as well as white from yellow ; 

 but I do not gather so much that he proposes the scheme referred to in the text 

 {i. e., the same yeUow giving rise to both white and red), but rather looks upon red 

 as derived from one yeUow, white from another. Of course, when his remarks were 

 written there was practically no experimental evidence at hand on this subject. 

 The only single support I have met with for Mr. Cockerell's views on the derivation 

 of white from yellow, is a remark by Kirby (' European Butterflies and Moths,' p. 8), 

 that Bryonia appears to have been the early form of Pieris, and was yellow. 



