CHAPTER XVII 
COLOR AND PATTERN AND THEIR USES 
ONSPICUOUS characteristic of the insect 
body is its color-pattern. The painted butter¬ 
flies, the great moths, the burnished beetles, 
the flashing dragon-flies, the green katydids 
and brown locusts, all attract attention first 
by the variety or intensity of their colors 
and the arrangement of these colors in simple 
or intricate symmetry of pattern. Even the 
small and, at casual glance, obscure and 
monochrome insects reveal on careful ex¬ 
amination a large degree of color development 
and an ofttimes amazing intricacy and beauty of pattern. So uniformly 
well developed is color-pattern among insects that no thoughtful collector or 
observer of these animals escapes the self-put question, What special cause 
is it that results in such a high degree of specialization of color and its 
arrangement throughout the insect class? and if he be an observer who 
has taken seriously the teachings of Darwin and the utilitarian school of 
naturalists, his question becomes couched in the form, What is the use to 
the insects of all this color and pattern? 
For the attitude of any modern student of Nature, confronted by such 
a phenomenon, is that of the seeker for the significance of the phenomenon. 
And the key to significance in such a case is to be sought in utility. The 
usefulness of color in animate Nature as an inspirer and satisfier of our 
own aesthetic needs and capacities, or of color-patterns as means whereby 
we may distinguish and recognize various sorts of animals and plants, is a 
usefulness which may be answer enough to the passing poet on the one hand, 
and the old-line Linnean systematist on the other, but is, of course, no answer 
to science. Science demands a usefulness to the color-bearing organisms 
themselves; and a usefulness large and serious enough to be the sufficient 
cause for so highly specialized and amazing a development. 
The explanations of some of the color phenomena of insects are obvious; 
some uses we recognize quickly as certain, some as probable, some as possible. 
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