Even when the sexes resemble one another, we will hardly consider that their brilliant and beautifully-organized colours are the purposeless results of the character of the tissues and of the motion of the encompassing conditions. And, once more, what’s the which means of the colours being widely different in the males and females of certain species, and alike in the 2 sexes of different species of the same genus? Additionally it is remarkable that in very many species in which the sexes differ enormously in colour on their upper surface, the decrease surface is intently similar or identical in each sexes, and serves as a protection. Most Moths relaxation motionless throughout the whole or better a part of the day with their wings depressed; and the entire higher surface is commonly shaded and coloured in an admirable manner, as Mr. Wallace has remarked, for escaping detection. Lycænæ expands her brown wings when she settles on the bottom, and is then almost invisible; the male, however, as if aware of the danger incurred from the brilliant blue of the upper surface of his wings, rests with them closed; and this shews that the blue colour can’t be in any means protecting.
Both the males and females in these cases are conspicuous, and it isn’t credible that their distinction in colour should stand in any relation to odd safety. He quotes, also, Guenée, that Setina produces a sound just like the ticking of a watch, apparently by the aid of “two massive tympaniform vesicles, situated within the pectoral region;” and these “are rather more developed in the male than within the feminine.” Hence the sound-producing organs within the Lepidoptera appear to face in some relation with the sexual features. The females throughout the genus retain the identical normal style of colouring, so that they resemble each other way more intently than they resemble their own males. In a number of species, as an illustration in P. ascanius, the males and females are alike; in others the males are either a little bit brighter, or very far more superb than the females. In these species both sexes are alike; but within the common brimstone butterfly (Gonepteryx rhamni), the male is of an intense yellow, whilst the feminine is far paler; and in the orange-tip (Anthocharis cardamines) the males alone have their wings tipped with vibrant orange.
Most of them described abstinence not as one thing that they had embraced (as a consequence of religious belief, say) a lot as something they’d found themselves backed into as a result of trauma, anxiety, or depression. Each one must have admired the excessive magnificence of many butterflies and of some moths; and it could also be asked, are their colours and diversified patterns the result of the direct motion of the physical conditions to which these insects have been uncovered, with none profit being thus derived? Hence in these two latter species the brilliant colours of the males seem to have been transferred to the females; while within the tenth species the male has either retained or recovered the plain colours of the feminine, in addition to of the mum or dad-type of the genus. In nine of these twelve species the males rank amongst the most brilliant of all butterflies, and differ so enormously from the comparatively plain females that they were formerly positioned in distinct genera. With our stunning English butterflies, the admiral, peacock, and painted lady (Vanessæ), as well as many others, the sexes are alike. Our frequent little English blue butterflies of the genus Lycæna, illustrate the various variations in color between the sexes, virtually as well, although not in so hanging a way, as the above exotic genera.
With animals of every kind, whenever colour has been modified for some particular function, this has been, so far as we are able to decide, either for direct or oblique safety, or as an attraction between the sexes. Indian and Sumatran butterfly (Kallima), which disappears like magic when it settles on a bush; for it hides its head and antennæ between its closed wings, which, in form, color and veining, can’t be distinguished from a withered leaf with its footstalk. In an allied Indian form, the Iphias glaucippe, the orange-tips are fully developed in both sexes. In the Anth. sara from California, the orange-tips to the wings have been partially developed within the female; but they are paler than within the male, and barely completely different in another respects. As Mr. Walsh has remarked to me, the females of our orange-tip butterfly, above referred to, and of an American species (Anth. As in several earlier circumstances, we may here infer that it’s the males of Anth. The identical purpose which compels us to believe that the lower surfaces have here been coloured for the sake of protection, leads us to deny that the wings have been tipped with shiny orange for the same goal, particularly when this character is confined to the males.