“If internal laws controlled the markings on butterflies’ wings, we should expect that some general rule could be established, requiring that the upper and under surfaces of the wings should be alike or that they should be different, or that the fore wings should be colored the same as or differently from the hind wings, etc. But in reality all possible kinds of combinations occur simultaneously, and no rule holds throughout. Or, it might be supposed that bright colors should occur only on the upper surface or only on the under surface, or on the fore wings or only on the hind wings. But the fact is they occur indiscriminately, now here, now there, and no one method of appearance is uniform throughout all the species. But the fitness of the various distributions of colors is apparent, and the moment we apply the principle of utility we know why in the diurnal butterflies the upper surface alone is usually variegated and the under surface protectively colored, or why in the nocturnal butterflies the fore wings have the appearance of bark, of old wood, or of a leaf, whilst the hind wings, which are covered when resting, alone are brilliantly colored. On this theory we also understand the exceptions to these rules. We comprehend why Danaids, Heliconids, Euploids, and Acracids, in fact all diurnal butterflies offensive to the taste and smell, are mostly brightly marked and equally so on both surfaces, whilst all species not thus exempt from persecution have the protective coloring on the under surface and are frequently quite differently colored there from what they are on the upper. “In any event, the supposed formative laws are not obligatory. Dispensations from them can be issued and are issued _whenever utility requires it_.” Dispensations from the laws of growth! Does not a philosophy of this sort seem to carry us back into the dark ages? Is this the best that the Darwinian school can do to protect itself against the difficulties into which its chief disciple confesses it has fallen? Weismann lays great emphasis on the case of the Indian leaf-butterfly, _Kallima inachis_; and points out that the leaf markings are executed “in absolute independence of the other uniformities governing the wing.” “The venation of the wing is utterly ignored by the leaf markings, and its surface is treated as a _tabula rasa_ upon which anything conceivable can be drawn. In other words, we are presented here with a _bilaterally symmetrical_ figure engraved on a surface which is essentially _radially symmetrical_ in its divisions.