Wallace, always a strenuous opponent of the Sexual Selection theory, found in the behaviour of Butterflies and Moths when mate-hunting a particularly powerful countervailing weapon. He assumes that Darwin postulated a conscious selection on the part of the female, and with some show of reason, though it is probable that Wallace was mistaken in this. “The weakness of the evidence for conscious selection among these insects,” he remarks, “is so palpable, that Mr. Darwin is obliged to supplement it by the singularly inconclusive argument, ‘Unless the female prefer one male to another the pairing must be left to mere chance, and this does not appear probable’ But he has just said, ‘The males sometimes fight together in rivalry, and many may be seen pursuing or crowding round the same female’ While in the case of the Silk-moths—‘the females appear not to evince the least choice in regard to their partners.’ Surely the plain inference from all this is, that the males fight and struggle for the almost passive female, and that the most vigorous and energetic, the strongest-winged or the most persevering wins her. How can there be chance in this? Natural Selection would here act, as in birds, in perpetuating the strongest and most vigorous males; and as these would usually be the more highly coloured of their race, the same results would be produced as regards the intensification and variation of colour in the one case as the other.” Commenting on Darwin’s interpretation of those cases wherein the females are more brilliantly coloured than the males, he insists that on his (Darwin’s) theory “throughout the whole animal kingdom the males are usually so ardent that they will accept any female, while the females are coy, and choose the handsomest males, whence it is believed the general brilliancy of males as compared with females has arisen.”