CHAPTER XXVII 



BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS 



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/. Butterflies 



THESE gloriously resurrected "worms," these favorites of man from 

 ancient times, — creatures which he has been wont to consider purely 

 and simply bright and beautiful, — are in reality all tricked out in fine and 

 powerful disguising-costumes, which make them, each in its own special 

 situation and headquarters, invisible or scantily visible to their enemies. 

 Famed though butterflies are for their gay and wondrous gaudiness, there is 

 probably no single kind among them all whose coloration is not concealing, 

 in its true and particular environment, under the typical and appropriate 

 conditions. In civilized lands, species may and doubtless often do survive 

 their fittest environments, when these are destroyed by man. Hence it is 

 only in the primeval wilds — e. g., the great tropical forests — that the butter- 

 flies and their proper surroundings can infallibly be found together, and their 

 interrelationships rightly studied. Nor is it easy to imagine any pursuit in 

 natural history more profoundly fascinating than the study of the special 

 disguising-costumes of tropical butterflies. Even as the subject was known 

 to naturalists who recognized only mimicry and an exceedingly limited range 

 of more nearly obliterative " cryptic" color schemes, it was already a large 

 and very interesting theme. But it has now grown beyond measure greater 

 and more interesting, since by the disclosure of the simple laws of true oblit- 

 erative coloration, it has been extended to include practically all butterflies 

 and moths. 



If a man well fitted for the task were to devote his whole life to the study 



