166 THE MALAYAN PAPILIONIDE AS 
species than really exists. There is a completeness 
and satisfaction to the mind in defining and limiting 
and naming a species, whicb leads us all to do se 
whenever we conscientiously can, and which we know 
has led many collectors to reject vague intermediate 
forms as destroying the symmetry of their cabi- 
nets. We must therefore consider these cases of ex- 
cessive variation and instability as being thoroughly 
well established; and to the objection that, after all, 
these cases are but few compared with those in which 
species can be limited and defined, and are therefore 
merely exceptions to a general rule, I reply that a 
true law embraces all apparent exceptions, and that 
to the great laws of nature there are no real excep- 
tions—that what appear to be such are equally results 
of law, and are often (perhaps indeed always) those 
very results which are most important as revealing 
the true nature and action of the law. It is for such 
reasons that naturalists now look upon the study of 
varieties as more important than that of well-fixed 
species. It is in the former that we see nature still 
at work, in the very act of producing those wonderful 
modifications of form, that endless variety of colour, 
and that complicated harmony of relations, which 
gratify every sense and give occupation to every 
faculty of the true lover of nature. 
Variation as specially influenced by Locality. 
The phenomena of variation as influenced by locality 
have not hitherto received much attention. Botanists, » 
