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Lepidoptera.— [2 words illeg] to the law of Battle; in certain genera
Several males may often be seen pursuing or crowding round the same female; & [words illeg] they are pugnacious an Emperor butterfly has been captured with the tips of its wings broken whilst engaged in a conflict with another male; (weak creatures as they are) * (*Apatura Iris, The Entomologist's Weekly Intell: 1859 p. 139) but as Lepidoptera are furnished with [illeg] weapons of war of war. (The sexes of some Butterflies differ in the certain singular characters as in of the front feet of the males being atrophied, - the tibiae & tarsi being reduced to mere buds— & in the [illeg] of the wings departing from the type common by the group * (* E. Doubleday : Annals & Mag. of Nat. Hist vol. I. 1848. p. 379.)

The males of certain S. American butterflies have tufts of hairs on the margins of the hind wings, & others have a horny excrescence on the disk of the same wings.* (* H.  W. Bates, in Journal of Proc. of Linn. Soc. vol VI 1862 p. 74.) The meaning of these several sexual structural differences is not at all understood. Differences in the sexes is not at present

The colours, many the sexes of the  diurnal Lepidoptera or Butterflies, & of, some moths differ much in the two sexes. As the males & females of Our commonest & most beautiful butterflies, when sexes parts are coloured. Such as the admiral peacock, Painted lady &  Swallow-tail, are alike we are liable to overlook the fact; white cabbage yet the purple emperor & this is generally the case with

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Lepidoptera

the Heliconidae & Danaidae. But in certain exotic groups, which differ in layer only & even in some English Butterflies, as in the Purple Emperor, the sexes differ conspicuously.

No language suffices to describe the splendour of the males of some tropical species. In some few exceptional cases the females are the most beautiful & to these we shall recur. Even in the same genus or groups the sexual colouration follows   we have extending [words illeg] very different males. Thus Mr Bates knows both ten 12 species of the gay coloured tropical, American genus of Epicalia, *(a) both sexes of which haunt the same stations, & this is not always the case with butterflies. The males are among the most gaudy of all butterflies; the females are generally plain. The females of these ten species resemble each other in their general type of colouration. & likewise resemble both sexes in several allied genera found in various parts of the world; So that on the descent-theory we may believe that all the species of Epicalia are descended from an ancestral butterfly of this type coloured in the same general [illeg] The In one of the ten the male closely resembles the female (if plain coloured has retained primordial colour; if gay-coloured the female must have acquired gay colour)

In the other nine the males are so wonderfully different from the females, that entomologists formerly placed them in separate genera: in one of the nine males, though very gaily coloured, the colours & pattern are widely

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* (a) See also Mr Bates letter to Mr Walsh in communication in Proc. Eng. Soc. of Philadelphia 1865 p. 206.

In the [illeg] species both sexes male & female resemble each other & [illeg] retained the primordian colouring. In the 10-12 species, on the all both sexes depart from the usual type, & both are gaily coloured, but the males more gaily than the females. Hence in the 12 species the bright colours have apparently been [illeg] about equally to both sexes.

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from the other nine males. In two additional species of Epicalia, both males & females are gaily coloured, but the males more so than the females; & two colours of both sexes the collar are very different from the type in colour from the females of the ten species, which present the common or ancestral type. Eubagis — white males not only not being [illeg] to type.   Again, as I hear fromm Mr. Bates, in the genus Juanria[?], which comes near to our Vanessæ (Admiral; Peacock &c Butterflies) in which the sexes are always alike, we have all sorts of gradation of sexual disparity; namely males & females alike & both beautiful ?? ; — male & female of the same colour, but male lighter coloured — male & female different, but betraying their relationship by a certain amount of resemblance — & lastly males & females so widely different that no one would readily believe that they belong to the same species.

Generally when male very beautiful — [illeg sentence in pencil]

Females relating to [illeg] by the colours of the group

[illeg] males more highly coloured & departs most from general type of a group

It is chiefly upper surface of wings which change. 

Where males gradation of difference between males & females Here when males extremely beautiful, females generally are so to fertain extent, but exceptions to this. From this both gradations, & by a comparison of the species in many large genera, it is not proper to doubt that  coloration to [illeg] & prominent case of the splendid colours of one sex alone in like case the case of both sexes by splendid colours.

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Even with Both Our coloured little English blue Butterflies of the genus Polyommatus [illeg inserted sentence] we see cases analogous with the foregoing : thus in P. Œgon the wings of the males are of  a fine blue bordered into black, & in the female brown & bordered with red ocellated with black spots. In P. agestis both sexes are coloured brown & marked nearly like the female of P. Œgon ; & in P. arion both sexes are blue, like the male of P. Œgon  but though the female is more suffused with brown than the male, yet both sexes are blue like the male of P. Œgon.—

We shall [words illeg] like Birds.

(We may infer from the consideration of the foregoing cases that the cause, whatever it may be, of the splendid colours of butterflies in the same whether both sexes or one [illeg] is gaily decorated.

that is whether the bright colours [illeg words in pencil] by the females [illeg] to one or both sexes

with animals so highly organised I cannot persuade myself that the colours, which often differ conspicuously in closely allied species of the same genus, have no more signification than the colours of in the lowest [Redict] lowest margin animals which
[inserted pencil sentence]
apparently depend solely on the chemical (a) nature of the tissues in relation to light.— There can be no doubt that the colours of many Lepidoptera, especially of moths are protective; but no one will pretend that the comparison [illeg] of common