No one can seriously believe this in regard to butterflies who knows that their colours are dependent on the scales which thickly cover the wings, and the significance of which, in part at least, is just to give this or that colour to the wing. They are degenerate or colourless among the transparent-winged butterflies, and their colour depends partly on pigment, partly on fluorescence and interference conditioned by the fine microscopical structure of a system of intercrossing lines on faintly coloured scales. The scales of our male 'blue' butterflies (_Lycæna_) only appear blue because of their structure, while the brown scales of their mates are due to a brown pigment. If the pigment be removed from the scales of the female by boiling with caustic potash, and they be then dried, they do not look blue like those of the male; the scales of the male, therefore, must possess something which those of the female do not. Still less will any one be disposed to regard the marvellous splendour of the plumage of the male bird of Paradise, with its erectile collars--glistening like burnished metal--on the neck, breast or shoulders, with its tufts, with its specially decorative feathers standing singly out from the rest of the plumage, on head, wings, or tail, with its mane-like bunch of loose, pendulous feathers on the belly and on the sides, in short, with its extraordinary, diverse, and unique equipment of feathers, as a mere unintentional accessory effect of a feather dress designed for flight and protective warmth. Such conspicuous, diverse, and unusual specializations of plumage must have some other significance than that just indicated. Alfred Russel Wallace regards these distinctive features of the male as an expression of the greater vigour, and the more active metabolism of the males, but it is unproved that the vigour of the male birds is greater than that of the females, and it is not easy to see why a more active metabolism should be necessary for the production of strikingly bright colours than for that of a dark or protective colour. Moreover, there are brilliantly coloured females, both among birds and butterflies, and in nearly allied species the males may be either gorgeous or quite plain like the females.