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president’s address. 
connected with the development of the aesthetic sense in 
man. He says, referring to the colours of birds, insects, 
and flowers : “ The relation of this wealth of colour to our 
mental and moral nature is indisputable. The child and the 
savage alike admire the gay tints of flowers, birds, and 
insects ; while to many of us their contemplation brings 
a solace and enjoyment which is wholly beneficial. It can 
hardly excite surprise that this relation was long thought 
to afford a sufficient explanation of the phenomena of colour 
in nature. What could be the use to the Butterfly of its 
gaily painted wings, or to the Humming Bird of its jewelled 
breast, except to add the final touches to a world picture 
calculated at once to please and to refine mankind ? And 
even now, with all our recently acquired knowledge of this 
subject, who shall say that these old world views are not 
intrinsically and fundamentally sound, and that although 
we now know that colour has uses in nature that we little 
dreamt of, yet the relations of these colours, or rather of 
the various rays of the light to our senses and emotions, 
may not be another and more important use which they 
subserve in the great system of the Universe.” These words 
were written forty years since ; but in his recent book on 
the ‘ World of Life,’ published last year, Wallace endorses 
them and says with reference to the colour perceptions of 
the man, “ That they have not been developed in us solely 
by their survival value in the struggle for existence ; which 
is all we could have acquired if the views of such thinkers 
as Grant Allen and Professor Haeckel represent the whole 
truth on this subject. They seem on the other hand to be 
given us with our higher aesthetic and moral attributes as 
a part of the needful equipment of a being whose spiritual 
nature is being developed, not merely to satisfy his material 
needs, but to fit him for a higher and more enduring life of 
dontinued progress. 
The last point of interest connected with the Lepidoptera 
