CHAPTER XI.
INSECTS, continued. ORDER LEPIDOPTERA. (BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS.)
Courtship of butterflies Battles Ticking noise Colours common to both
sexes, or more brilliant in the males Examples Not due to the direct
action of the conditions of life Colours adapted for protection Colours
of moths Display Perceptive powers of the
Lepidoptera Variability Causes of the difference in colour between the
males and females Mimicry, female butterflies more brilliantly coloured
than the males Bright colours of caterpillars Summary and concluding
remarks on the secondary sexual characters of insects Birds and insects
compared.
In this great Order the most interesting points for us are the
differences in colour between the sexes of the same species, and
between the distinct species of the same genus. Nearly the whole of the
following chapter will be devoted to this subject; but I will first
make a few remarks on one or two other points. Several males may often
be seen pursuing and crowding round the same female. Their courtship
appears to be a prolonged affair, for I have frequently watched one or
more males pirouetting round a female until I was tired, without seeing
the end of the courtship. Mr. A.G. Butler also informs me that he has
several times watched a male courting a female for a full quarter of an
hour; but she pertinaciously refused him, and at last settled on the
ground and closed her wings, so as to escape from his addresses.
Although butterflies are weak and fragile creatures, they are
pugnacious, and an emperor butterfly (1. Apatura Iris: The
Entomologist s Weekly Intelligence, 1859, p. 139. For the Bornean
Butterflies, see C. Collingwood, Rambles of a Naturalist, 1868, p.
183.) has been captured with the tips of its wings broken from a
conflict with another male. Mr. Collingwood, in speaking of the
frequent battles between the butterflies of Borneo, says, They whirl
round each other with the greatest rapidity, and appear to be incited
by the greatest ferocity.
The Ageronia feronia makes a noise like that produced by a toothed
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