MELANISM AND MELANOCHROISM. 
51 
quotes at length from Mr. A. R. Wallace’s recent Address to 
the Biological Section of the British Association at Glasgow^ 
but the conclusions of Mr. Wallace are ^more or less open to 
question, and I doubt altogether, both his conclusions and the 
one at which Mr. Birchall arrives : — “As it thus appears certain 
that greater strength of constitution and more powerful ano 
acute perceptive faculties are, from some yet unknown cause, 
associated with dark colours in the vertebrata, may we not 
presume that insects are subject to the same law, and that 
dark varieties of lepidoptera are able to spread and increase 
under adverse conditions, whilst the lighter coloured types fail 
to do so, and are consequently eliminated in the struggle for 
life, and that the occurrence of melanic forms may be thus 
reasonably explained as a simple case of the ‘ survival of the 
fittest ’ ? ” 
Taking man as the highest of the vertebrata, such a conclu- 
sion as this seems to force us on the horns of a dilemma. 
Either the pale Anglo-Saxon race, which has shown its strength 
over all other races, and has fixed itself as the predominant 
race of the world, must still be looked upon as inferior to the 
races under its sway, or we must look upon the predominant 
race as a great exception to what above is called “the rule,” 
although I do not follow out the application of “the rule.” 
Dr. F. Buchanan White, dealing with this question {Ent. Mo. 
Mag., vol. xiii., p. 149), writes : — “ That melanochroic (or 
melanic) insects are peculiarly favoured with stronger constitu- 
tions and more acute senses, there is not, I think, any reason 
for supposing. Frequently, in fact, melanochroic (and more 
frequently, melanic) individuals are of smaller size than the 
typical form.” I think decidedly, variation in size in lepidoptera, 
has its origin essentially in phytophagic causes, and that where 
melanic forms are small, the size is due to phytophagic, the 
melanism, to other causes. Mr. S. Radcliff Fetherstonhaugh 
also discusses Mr. Birchall’s conclusion in the same volume of 
the Ent. Mo. Mag., p. 215, and writes : — “ Mr. Birchall quotes 
from learned writers, who assert as fact that dark coloured 
animals, from the lower orders up to the superior animal, man, 
have advantages in freedom from disease, less liability to 
parasites, superior acuteness of the senses, etc., which their 
paler coloured fellows do not possess ; I must say, I do not 
see any foundation for this doctrine. In the races of men it 
certainly does not appear to hold good, as the fair-haired Saxon 
is able to hold his own physically and intellectually against the 
