| OCR Text |
Show 400 SEXUAL SELECTION. PART II. und I have been assured by a friend, that these moths repeatedly visited flowers painted on the walls of a room in the South of France. The common white butterfly, as I hear from Mr. Doubleday, often flies down to a bit of paper on the ground, no doubt mist~king it ~or one of its own species. Mr. Collingwood 17 I~ sp~akmg of the difficulty of collecting certain butter~Ies m. the Malay Archipelago, states that" a dead spemmen.pmned upon "a conspicuous twig will often arrest an m.sect. of the "same species in its headlong flight~ and .br~ng It down "within easy reach of the net, especially If It be of the "opposite sex." . The courtship of butterflies is a prolonged affau. The males sometimes £ght together in rivalry ; and many may be seen pursuing or crowding round the same female. If, then, the females do not prefer one male to .another, the pairing must be left to mere chance, and this does not appear to me a probable event. If, on the other hand, the females habitually, or even occasionally, prefer the more beautiful males, the colours of the latter will have been rendered brighter by degrees, and will have been transmitted to both sexes or to one sex, according to which law of inheritance prevailed. The process of sexual selection will have been much facilit. ated, if the conclusions arrived at from various kinds of evidence in the supplement to the ninth chapter can be trusted; namely that the males of many Lepidoptera, at least in the imago state, greatly exceed in number the females. Some facts, however, are opposed to the belief that female butterflies prefer the more beautiful males; thus, as I have been assured by several observers, fresh females may frequently be seen paired with battered, faded or 1 i 'Rambles of a Naturalist in the Chinese Seas,' 1868, p. 182. Cn.A.r. XI. BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS. 401 dingy males; but this is a circumstance which could hardly ~ail often to follow from the males emerging from their cocoons earlier than the females. vVHh moths o~ the family of the Bombycidm, the sexes pair immediately after assuming the imago state ; for they cannot feed, owing to the rudimentary condition of their mouths. The females, as several entomologists have remarked to .me, lie in an almost torpid state, and appear not to ev1~c~ the least choice in regard to their partners. This IS the case with the common silk-moth (B. mori), as I have been told by some continental and English breeders. Dr. vVallace, who has had such immense experience in breeding Bombyx cynthia, is convinced that the females evince no choice or preference. He bas kept above 300 of these moths living together, and has often found the most vigorous females mated with stunted males. The reverse apparently seldom occurs · for, as he believes, the more vigorous males pass over th~ weakly females, being attracted by those endowed with most vitalit~. Although we have been indirectly induced to beheve that the females of many species prefer t?e mor~ beautiful males, I have no reason to suspect, either With moths or butterflies, that the males are attracted by the beauty of the females. If the more beautiful females had been continually preferred, it is almost certain, from the colours of butterflies being so frequently transmitted to one sex alone, that the females would often have been rendered more beautiful than their m.ale partners. But this does not occur except in a few mstances ; and these can be explained, as we shall presently see, on the principle of mimickry and protection. As sexual selection primarily depends on variability, a few words must be added on this subject. In respect VOL. I. 2 D |
