HINTS FOR THE MONTH. 
95 
“ If you will not think it out of place,” added Mr. Darwin, “ I 
will endeavour to treat the subject in the light of the latest scien¬ 
tific theory—the theory I mean of Natural Selection.” 
“ Very good,” chimed in the learned archdeacon, “I am not 
at all alarmed, as some good people are at the ‘new-fangled’ 
notions of my scientific friend : but for the special guidance, 
help, and comfort, of those who are in danger of losing their 
faith in God, I shall take as my theme the evidences of design 
supplied by the study of a butterfly’s wing.” 
“All this is excellent,” remarked the erudite Swede, “but in 
my day we regarded classification as the very soul of science. My 
worthy successors, Paley and Darwin, may treat the subject as 
Theologians or evolutionists, but I shall confine my remarks to 
the position which the butterfly holds in the System of Nature.” 
“ Science was in its swaddling bands, gentlemen, when I first 
fell in love with nature. We Greeks (it was Theophrastus speak¬ 
ing) were of a poetic, imaginative, and perhaps mystical turn of 
mind. We were fond of symbol, analogue, and simile. What 
we saw in nature we were wont to use as type of something in 
other realms. We spiritualized, idealized, sometimes may be 
dreamed. If, however, your moderns have not lost touch with 
us ; if you deem it worth your while to go back to the infancy of 
the human race, I shall be most happy to show how in reality 
your science, religion, and poetry, are all more or less the legiti¬ 
mate, direct, and necessary off-spring and outcome of the Grecian 
mind. Permit me to treat the butterfly symbolically.” 
It remained for me simply to act as amanuensis, or secretary of 
this society of Savants, and while they poured forth their treasures 
of learning, I listened and wrote. It was, however, at my sug¬ 
gestion agreed, that if each speaker would first give us a brief 
resume of his life and times, we should be able the better to 
understand how it happened that each looked upon the butter¬ 
fly’s wings with so different an eye from the other, and we there¬ 
fore spent half-an-hour on this fascinating theme. We will 
now, listen to Theophrastus, Linnaeus, Paley, Darwin, and Words¬ 
worth, as how they came to be interested, in their own particular 
way, in the subject of this paper. 
HINTS FOR THE MONTH. 
LEPIDOPTERA. 
Hybernia rupicapraria may be seen flying at dusk by the sides 
of hedges, and if the weather be mild. H. progemmaria and H. 
leucophetwia will make their appearance towards the end of the 
month, and if in the course of January we get one or two of the 
