The Means Employed by Butterflies of the Genus Basilarchia for the Perpetuation of the Species

The power of reproduction conceded, the universal instinct for self-pl’eservation is the flndamental and controlling pviciple by which the perpetuation of any kind of animal is successfully reached. The uncontrollable maternal instinct of self-sacrifice existing in some animals alone overmasters it, and this exists only in the higher animals, which, compared with the great mass, are but few in number; and is then in most cases called into play only when the creature’s life-work is nearly finished. No such instinct occurs among butterflies, nor is in any way likely to be found, so that self-preservation" and perpetuation of the species" are here, at least through all but the closing days of life, practically equivalent terms. The ’struggle for existence" in the species and in the individual are largely convertible terms. This struggle is the perpetual inherianceof the individual. The individual inherits alike its structure and its habits of life, which latter are very largely, perhaps almost absolutely, dependent on its structure; its tastes and its propensities, its fears and its devices to circumvent its enemies; all its instincts, which are to a great extent, possibly wholly, the entailment of ancestral habits; its very attitudes, whether at rest or in motion. Its advantages and its disadvantages are thus alike its legacy; so too the peculiar means it employs to disembarrass itself of these disadvantages. This is especially and more immediately true of the insect in its earlier stages, where freedom to change the immediate surroundings is exceedingly limited or altogether impossible, except so far as there is foresight, o1" an