Chap. XL Butterjlies and Moths. 317 



males ; for on any other supposition the males would, as tar as 

 we can see, be ornamented to no purpose. We know that ants 

 and certain Lamellicorn beetles are capable of feeling an attach- 

 ment for each other, and that ants recognise 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 colours. They certainly 

 discover flowers by colour. 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 endeavour to insert 

 their proboscis into them. Fritz Miiller informs me that several 

 kinds of butterflies in S. Brazil shew an unmistakable prefer- 

 ence for certain colours 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. Collingwood^^ in speaking of 

 the diflSoulty in collecting certain butterflies in the Malay 

 Archipelago, states that " a dead specimen pinned upon a 

 " conspicuous twig will often arrest an insect of the same species 

 " in its headlong flight, and bring it down within easy reach of 

 " the net, especially if it be of the opposite sex." 



The courtship of butterflies is, as before remarked, a prolonged 

 affair. The males sometimes fight together in rivalry ; and 

 many may be seen pursuing or crowding round the same 

 female. Unless, then, the females prefer one male to another, 

 the pairing must be left to mere chance, and this does not 

 appear probable. If, on the other hand, the females habitually, 

 or even occasionally, prefer the more beautiful males, the colours 

 of the latter will have been rendered brighter by degrees, and 

 will have been transmitted to both sexes or to one sex, according 

 to the law of inheritance which has prevailed. The process of 

 sexual selection will have been much facilitated, if the conclusion 

 can be trusted, arrived at from various kinds of evidence in the 

 supplement to the ninth chapter; namely, that the males ot 

 many Lepidoptera, at least in the imago state, greatly exceed 

 the females in number. 



Some facts, however, are opposed to the belief that female 

 *- ' Rambles of a Maturaiist in the Chinese Seas,' 1868, p. 182. 



