president’s address. 169 
of the Caterpillar into an admirable machine for the procuring, 
digesting, and storing up of nutriment, the breaking up of 
this machinery, and its conversion into a Butterfly, a creature 
of totally different powers and endowments, but in accordance 
with a preconceived plan which had been sketched out even 
before the Caterpillar itself was hatched, I think we must 
agree with Wallace that the existence of a Divine intelligence, 
planning and directing all this wonderful series of changes, 
is the only satisfactory explanation that can be given ; that 
they are not the results of a fortuitous concourse of atoms, 
but that infinite Wisdom has planned, guided, and directed 
the whole process. 
I think I cannot better conclude my address than by 
quoting another passage from Wallace’s ‘ World of Life.’ 
He says: “Bates has well observed that the expanded wings 
of Butterflies seem to have been used by Nature to write 
thereon the story of the origin of the species.” To this we 
may, I think, add, that she has also used them, like the pages 
of some old illuminated missal, to exhibit all her powers in 
the production, on a miniature scale, of the utmost possibilities 
of colour decoration, of colour variety and of colour beauty ; 
and has done this by a method which appears to us un- 
necessarily complex and supremely difficult, in order perhaps 
to lead us to recognise some guiding power, some supreme 
mind, directing and organising the blind forces of Nature in 
the production of this marvellous development of life and 
loveliness. The prophet poet, who half a century ago beheld 
what we are like to see, viz., “ The nations’ airy navies 
grappling in the central blue,” may be equally true when, 
reviewing the universe, he exclaimed : 
“ One God, one Law, one Element, 
And one far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves.” 
