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Show 408 SEXUAL SELECTION. PART II. in comparison with the species having brightly-coloured males. On the other hand, as bright colours are supposed to be highly serviceable to the males in their love-struggles, the brighter males (as we shall see in the chapter on Birds) although exposed to rather greater danger, would on an average procreate a greater number of offspring than the duller males. In this case, if the variations were limited in their transmission to the male sex, the males alone would be rendered more brilliantly coloured; but if the variations were not thus limited, the preservation and augmentation of such variations would depend on whether more evil was caused to the species by the females bejng rendered conspicuous, than good to the males by certain individuals being successful over their rivals. As there can hardly be a doubt that both sexes of many butterflies and moths have been rendered dullcoloured for the sake of protection, so it · may have been with the females alone of some species in which successive variations towards dullness first appeared in the female sex and were from the first limited in their transmission to the same sex. If not thus limited, both sexes would become dull-coloured. vVe shall immediately see, when we treat of mimickry, that the females alone of certain butterflies have been rendered extremely beautiful for the sake of protection, without any of the successive protective variations having been transferred to the male, to whom thev could not possibly have been in the least degree injurious, and therefore could not have been eliminated through natural selection. Whether in each particular species, in "'hich the sexes differ in colour, it is the female which has been specially modified for the sake of protection; or whether it is the male which has been specially modified for the sake of sexual attraction, the Cii.AP. XI. BUTTERFLIES AND 1\IOTHS. 409 female having retained her primordial colouring only slightly changed through the agencies before alluded to; or whether again both sexes have been modified, the female for protection and the male for sexual attrac• tion, can only be definitely decided when we know the life-history of each species. Without distinct evidence, I ,am unwilling to admit that a double process of selection has long been going on with a multitude of species,-the males having been _rendered more brilliant by beating their rivals; and the females more dull-coloured by having escaped from their enemies. We may take as an instance the common brimstone butterfly (Gonepteryx), which appears early in the spring before any other kind. The male of this species is of a far more intense yellow than the female, though she is almost equally conspicuous; and in this case it does not seem probable that she specially acquired her pale tints as a protection, though it is probable that the male acquired his bright colours as a sexual attraction. The female of Anthocharis cardarnines does not possess the beautiful orange tips to her wings with which the male is ornamented; consequently she closely resembles the white butterflies (Pieris) so common in ()Ur gardens; but we have no evidence that this resemblance is beneficial. On the contrary, as she resembles both sexes of several species of the same genus inhabiting various quartt'rs of the world, it is more probable that she has simply retained to a large extent her primordial colouTs. Various facts support the conclusion that with the greater number of brilliantly-coloured Lepidoptera, it is the male which has been modified; the two sexes baving come to differ from each other, or to resemble each other, according to which form of inheritance has prevailed. Inheritance is governed by so many un- |
