548 Analyses of Books. [September, 
( Basilarchia Archippus), which during the butterfly life has never 
tasted, can by no possibility ever taste, of willow or poplar ; that 
it should choose just those trees necessary for the food of progeny 
it is never to see defies our powers of explanation on any hypo- 
thesis which leaves all to blind forces.” Though by no means 
pledged to any such hypothesis, we think the difficulties of the 
case scarcely so great as the learned author represents. Granting 
that the mature butterfly has never tasted willow or poplar leaves, 
why should we assume that it has forgotten the diet of its earlier 
stages from which all its tissues have been elaborated ? Is it not 
quite conceivable that, by the smell of such trees, the female may 
be stimulated to oviposition ? If we pronounce this and similar 
phenomena to be the results of a Divinely implanted “ instindl,” 
we have to face the difficulty that such instindls mislead, as in 
the case of the blowfly, who deposits her eggs not upon carrion, 
but upon flowers with a carrion-like odour, where the larvae 
of course perish. 
Referring to the fa<51 that the young caterpillar, immediately 
after emerging from the egg, devours the shell, the author pro- 
nounces this acft “ plainly a provision of Nature, by which the 
tender animal is rid of a sure token to his enemies of his imme- 
diate proximity. Is this reason or instincft ? and, if instinct, will 
those who believe this power to be only an accumulated inherit- 
ance of ancestral wisdom pray give us a single suggestion of the 
line of descent by which this lonely, defenceless creature learned 
his art?” We are reludlant to differ from a naturalist of Mr. 
Scudder’s eminent merit, but to us the whole transaction appears 
in another light. We do not see that the egg-shell is devoured 
as a precaution against enemies. Suppose an insectivorous bird 
finds the empty shell of a butterfly’s egg upon a leaf. How is he 
to know whether the inmate escaped to-day or yesterday, whither 
it has wandered, whether or no it has already fallen a victim to 
some other bird, or whether the larva has emerged in due course, 
or the shell has been broken and its contents devoured by some 
predatory insect ? We suspect that this habit of the young 
caterpillar is an instance of that preference for animal food which 
most creatures show in the earliest stages of their existence. 
Hurrying over a great extent of important matter, we come to 
a chapter on the “ Origin and Development of Ornamentation.” 
It is very justly remarked that in the butterflies — and probably 
in them alone — there is a direcft relation between beauty and 
rank, the most variegated and exquisite patterns being found in 
the higher families. This, the author adds, is what should be 
expecfted on the theory that the lower represent earlier, and the 
higher forms later, developed from the common stock. He 
points out the wide difference between the ornamentation of ver- 
tebrate animals and that of butterflies. The former is the result 
of a series of protracfled changes, extending over months of the 
animal’s life. In butterflies the wing-scales are found at once 
