We therefore see here a community of form within the same compass as
that in which there is community in the conditions of life. In all
butterflies such community is found in their diurnal habits, and in
accordance with this we find that these only, and not their larvæ, can
be formed into a group having common characters.
In the larvæ also we only find agreement in the conditions of life
within a much wider compass, viz. within the whole order. Between
the limits of the order Lepidoptera the conditions of life in the
caterpillars are, as has just been shown, on the whole very uniform,
and the structure of the larvæ accordingly agrees almost exactly in all
Lepidopterous families in every essential, _i.e._ typical, part.
In this way is explained the hitherto incomprehensible phenomenon that
the sub-ordinal group _Rhopalocera_ cannot be based on the larvæ, but
that Lepidopterous caterpillars can as a whole be associated into a
higher group (order); they constitute altogether families and an order,
but not the intermediate group of a sub-order. By this means we at the
same time reply to an objection that may be raised, viz. that larval
forms cannot be formed into high systematic groups because of their
“low and undeveloped” organization.
To this form of incongruence, viz. to the formation of systematic
groups of unequal value and magnitude, I must attach the greatest
weight with respect to theoretical considerations. I maintain that
this, as I have already briefly indicated above, is wholly incompatible
with the admission of a phyletic force. How is it conceivable that such
a power could work in the same organism in two entirely different
directions--that it should in the same species lead to the constitution
of quite different systems for the larvæ and for the imagines, or that
it should lead only to the formation of families in the larvæ and to
sub-orders in the imagines? If an internal force existed which had
a tendency to call into existence certain groups of animal forms of
such a nature that these constituted one harmonious whole of which
the components bore to one another fixed morphological relationships,
it would certainly have been an easy matter for such a power to have
given to the larvæ of butterflies some small character which would
have distinguished them as such, and which would in some measure have
impressed them with the stamp of “_Rhopalocera_.” Of such a character
we find no trace however; on the contrary, everything goes to show that
the transformations of the organic world result entirely from external
influences.
III.
INCONGRUENCES IN OTHER ORDERS OF INSECTS.
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