sexual selection.

For instance, in most polygamous animals the males fight for the possession of the females, and the victors, always becoming the progenitors of the succeeding generation, impress upon their male offspring their own superior size, strength, or unusually developed offensive weapons. It is thus that we can account for the spurs and the superior strength and size of the males in Gallinaceous birds, and also for the large canine tusks in the males of fruit-eating Apes. So the superior beauty of plumage and special adornments of the males of so many birds can be explained by supposing (what there are many facts to prove) that the females prefer the most beautiful and perfect-plumaged males, and that thus, slight accidental variations of form and colour have been accumulated, till they have produced the wonderful train of the Peacock and the gorgeous plumage of the Bird of Paradise. Both these causes have no doubt acted partially in insects, so many species possessing horns and powerful jaws in the male sex only, and still more frequently the males alone rejoicing in rich colours or sparkling lustre. But there is here another cause which has led to sexual differences, viz., a special adaptation of the sexes to diverse habits or modes of life. This is well seen in female Butterflies (which are generally weaker and of slower flight), often having colours better adapted to concealment; and in certain South American species (Papilio torquatus) the females, which inhabit the forests, resemble the Æneas group of Papilios which abound

in similar localities, while the males, which frequent the sunny open river-banks, have a totally different colouration. In these cases, therefore, natural selection seems to have acted independently of sexual selection; and all such cases may be considered as examples of the simplest dimorphism, since the offspring never offer intermediate varieties between the parent forms.

The phenomena of dimorphism and polymorphism may be well illustrated by supposing that a blue-eyed, flaxen-haired Saxon man had two wives, one a blackhaired, red-skinned Indian squaw, the other a woollyheaded, sooty-skinned negress—and that instead of the children being mulattoes of brown or dusky tints, mingling the separate characteristics of their parents in varying degrees, all the boys should be pure Saxon boys like their father, while the girls should altogether resemble their mothers. This would be thought a sufficiently wonderful fact; yet the phenomena here brought forward as existing in the insect-world are still more extraordinary; for each mother is capable not only of producing male offspring like the father, and female like herself, but also of producing other females exactly like her fellow-wife, and altogether differing from herself. If an island could be stocked with a colony of human beings having similar physiological idiosyncrasies with Papilio Pammon or Papilio Ormenus, we should see white men living with yellow, red, and black women, and their offspring always reproducing the same types; so that

at the end of many generations the men would remain pure white, and the women of the same well-marked races as at the commencement.

The distinctive character therefore of dimorphism is this, that the union of these distinct forms does not produce intermediate varieties, but reproduces the distinct forms unchanged. In simple varieties, on the other hand, as well as when distinct local forms or distinct species are crossed, the offspring never resembles either parent exactly, but is more or less intermediate between them. Dimorphism is thus seen to be a specialized result of variation, by which new physiological phenomena have been developed; the two should therefore, whenever possible, be kept separate.

3. Local form, or variety.—This is the first step in the transition from variety to species. It occurs in species of wide range, when groups of individuals have become partially isolated in several points of its area of distribution, in each of which a characteristic form has become more or less completely segregated. Such forms are very common in all parts of the world, and have often been classed by one author as varieties, by another as species. I restrict the term to those cases where the difference of the forms is very slight, or where the segregation is more or less imperfect. The best example in the present group is Papilio Agamemnon, a species which ranges over the greater part of tropical Asia, the whole of the Malay archipelago, and a portion of the Australian and Pacific regions. The modifications are principally of size and form,

and, though slight, are tolerably constant in each locality. The steps, however, are so numerous and gradual that it would be impossible to define many of them, though the extreme forms are sufficiently distinct. Papilio Sarpedon presents somewhat similar but less numerous variations.

4. Co-existing Variety.-This is a somewhat doubtful case. It is when a slight but permanent and hereditary modification of form exists in company with the parent or typical form, without presenting those intermediate gradations which would constitute it a case of simple variability. It is evidently only by direct evidence of the two forms breeding separately that this can be distinguished from dimorphism. The difficulty occurs in Papilio Jason, and P. Evemon, which inhabit the same localities, and are almost exactly alike in form, size, and colouration, except that the latter always wants a very conspicuous red spot on the under surface, which is found not only in P. Jason, but in all the allied species. It is only by breeding the two insects that it can be determined whether this is a case of a co-existing variety or of dimorphism. In the former case, however, the difference being constant and so very conspicuous and easily defined, I see not how we could escape considering it as a distinct species. A true case of co-existing forms would, I consider, be produced, if a slight variety had become fixed as a local form, and afterwards been brought into contact with the parent species, with little or no intermixture of the two; and such instances do very probably occur.

5. Race or subspecies.-These are local forms completely fixed and isolated; and there is no possible test but individual opinion to determine which of them shall be considered as species and which varieties. If stability of form and "the constant transmission of some characteristic peculiarity of organization" is the test of a species (and I can find no other test that is more certain than individual opinion) then every one of these fixed races, confined as they almost always are to distinct and limited areas, must be regarded as a species; and as such I have in most cases treated them. The various modifications of Papilio Ulysses, P. Peranthus, P. Codrus, P. Eurypilus, P. Helenus, &c., are excellent examples; for while some present great and well-marked, others offer slight and inconspicuous differences, yet in all cases these differences seem equally fixed and permanent. If, therefore, we call some of these forms species, and others varieties, we introduce a purely arbitrary distinction, and shall never be able to decide where to draw the line. The races of Papilio Ulysses, for example, vary in amount of modification from the scarcely differing New Guinea form to those of Woodlark Island and New Caledonia, but all seem equally constant; and as most of these had already been named and described as species, I have added the New Guinea form under the name of P. Autolycus. We thus get a little group of Ulyssine Papilios, the whole comprised within a very limited area, each one confined to a separate portion of that area, and, though differing in various amounts, each apparently constant.