Of all the external characters of animals, the most beautiful, the most varied, and the most generally attractive are the brilliant colours and strange yet often elegant markings with which so many of them are adorned. Yet of all characters this is the most difficult to bring under the laws of utility or of physical connection. Mr. Darwin--as you are well aware--has shown how wide is the influence of sex on the intensity of coloration; and he has been led to the conclusion that active or voluntary sexual selection is one of the chief causes, if not the chief cause, of all the variety and beauty of colour we see among the higher animals. This is one of the points on which there is much divergence of opinion even among the supporters of Mr. Darwin, and one as to which I myself differ from him. I have argued, and still believe, that the need of protection is a far more efficient cause of variation of colour than is generally suspected; but there are evidently other causes at work, and one of these seems to be an influence depending strictly on locality, whose nature we cannot yet understand, but whose effects are everywhere to be seen when carefully searched for. Although the careful experiments of Sir John Lubbock have shown that insects can distinguish colours--as might have been inferred from the brilliant colours of the flowers which are such an attraction to them--yet we can hardly believe that their appreciation and love of distinctive colours is so refined as to guide and regulate their most powerful instinct--that of reproduction. We are therefore led to seek some other cause for the varied colours that prevail among insects; and as this variety is most conspicuous among butterflies--a group perhaps better known than any other--it offers the best means of studying the subject. The variety of colour and marking among these insects is something marvellous. There are probably about ten thousand different kinds of butterflies now known, and about half of these are so distinct in colour and marking that they can be readily distinguished by this means alone. Almost every conceivable tint and pattern is represented, and the hues are often of such intense brilliance and purity as can be equalled by neither birds nor flowers. Any help to a comprehension of the causes which may have concurred in bringing about so much diversity and beauty must be of value; and this is my excuse for laying before you the more important cases I have met with of a connection between colour and locality.