414 THE DESCENT OF MAN 



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 ac- 

 counts 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 difficulty 

 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, oa the other hand, the 

 females habitually, or even occasionally, prefer the more 

 beautiful males, the colors of the latter will have been ren- 

 dered brighter by degrees, and will have been transmitted 

 to both sexes or to one sex, according to the law of inheri- 

 tance 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 

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

 exceed the females in number. 



Some facts, however, are opposed to the belief that fe- 

 male butterflies prefer the more beautiful males; thus, as I 

 have been assured by several collectors, fresh females may 

 frequently be seen paired with battered, faded, or dingy 

 males; but this is a circumstance which could hardly fail 

 often to follow from the males emerging from their cocoons 

 earlier than the females. With moths of the family of the 

 ' *» "Bamblea of a Naturalist in the Chinese Seas," 1868, p. 182. 



