thus actually protected by its bold and striking colors. The spots on our elephant hawk-moth caterpillar do not admit of this explanation, because the insect is quite good to eat I mean for birds. We must, therefore, if possible, account for them in some other way. There can, however, I think, be little doubt that Weissmann is right when he suggests that they actually protect the caterpillar by frightening its foes. the under side of the leaves, and retain | moths in Deilephila euphorbia, which, their green color. feeding on euphorbia, with its bitter milky Thus, in Smerinthus ocellatus, which juice, is very distasteful to birds, and is feeds on the willow and sallow; S. populi, which feeds on the poplar; and S. tiliæ, which frequents the lime, the caterpillars all remain green; while in the convolvulus hawk-moth, which frequents the convolvulus; Charocampa nerii, which feeds in this country on the periwinkle; Charocampa celerio, Ch. elpenor, and Ch. porcellus (small low species which feed on galium), most of the caterpillars turn brown. There are, indeed, some caterpillars which are brown, and yet do not go down to the ground, as, for instance, those of Aspilatis aspersaria, and indeed of the Geometrida generally. These caterpillars, however, as already mentioned, place themselves in peculiar attitudes, which, combined with their brown color, make them look almost exactly like bits of stick or dead twigs. Every one must have observed that these large caterpillars have a sort of uncanny, poisonous appearance; that they suggest a small thick snake or other evil beast, and the eyes do much to increase the deception. Moreover, the segment on which they are placed is swollen, and the insect when in danger has the habit of retracting its head and front segments, The last of the five points to which I which gives it an additional resemblance called your attention was the eye-spots. In to some small reptile. That small birds some cases spots may serve for conceal- are, as a matter of fact, afraid of these ment, by resembling the marks on dead caterpillars (which, however, I need not leaves. In Deilephila hippophae, which say, are in reality altogether harmless) feeds on the hippophae, or sea buckthorn, Weissmann has proved by actual experi a very grey-green plant, the caterpillar ment. He put a caterpillar in a tray in also is a very similar grey-green, and which he was accustomed to place seed has, when full grown, a single red spot for birds. Soon a little flock of sparrows on each side, which, as Weissmann sug- and other small birds assembled to feed gests, at first sight much resembles in as usual. One of them lit on the edge of color and size one of the berries of hippo- this tray, and was just going to hop in, phae, which, moreover, are present, though when she spied the caterpillar. Immedinot ripe, at the same period of the year. ately she began bobbing her head up and Again, in Charocampa tersa there is an down, but was afraid to go nearer. Aneye-spot on each segment, which mimics other joined her, and then another, until the flower of the plant on which it feeds at last there was a little company of ten or (Spermacoce hyssopifolia). White spots, twelve birds, all looking on in astonishin some cases, also resemble the spots of ment, but not one ventured into the tray, light which penetrate foliage. In other while one which lit in it unsuspectingly beat instances, however, and at any rate in our a hasty retreat in evident alarm as soon elephant hawk-moth, the eye-spots cer- as she perceived the caterpillar. After tainly render the insect more conspicuous. watching for some time Weissmann reNow in some cases, as Wallace has moved the caterpillar, when the birds soon pointed out, this is an advantage rather attacked the seeds. than a drawback. Suppose that from the nature of its food or any other cause, as, for instance, from being covered with hair, a small green caterpillar was very bitter, or in any way disagreeable or dangerous as food, still in the number of small green caterpillars which birds love it would be continually swallowed by mistake. If, on the other hand, it had a conspicuous and peculiar color, its evil taste would serve to protect it, because the birds would soon recognize and avoid it, as Weir and others have proved experimentally. I have already alluded to a case of this among the hawk Other caterpillars also are probably protected by their curious resemblance to spotted snakes. Moreover, as Weissmann points out, we may learn another very interesting lesson from these caterpillars. They leave the egg, as we have seen, a plain green, like so many other caterpil lars, and gradually acquire a succession of markings, the utility of which I have just attempted to explain. The young larva, in fact, represents an old form, and the species in the lapse of ages has gone through the stage which each individual now passes through in a few weeks. Thus the caterpillar of Charocampa porcellus, | the small elephant hawk-moth, a species very nearly allied to Ch. elpenor, passes through almost exactly the same stages as that of Ch. elpenor. But it leaves the egg with a subdorsal line, which the caterpillar of Ch. elpenor does not acquire until after its moult. No one can doubt, however, that there was a time when the new-born caterpillars of Ch. porcellus were plain green, like those of Ch. elpenor. In this respect, then, Ch. porcellus is a newer specific form than Ch. elpenor. Again, if we compare the mature caterpillars of Charocampa we shall find that there are some forms, such as Ch. myron and Ch. charilus which never develop eye-spots, but even when full grown correspond to the second stage of Ch. elpenor. Here, then, we seem to have a species still in the stage which Ch. elpenor must have passed through long ago. The genus Deilephila, of which we have in England three species the euphorbia hawk-moth, the galium hawk-moth, and the rayed hawk-moth is also very instructive. The caterpillar of the euphorbia hawk-moth begins life of a clear green color, without a trace of the subsequent markings. After the first moult, however, it has a number of black patches, a white line, and a series of white dots, and has therefore, at one bound, acquired characters which in Ch. elpenor, as we have seen, were only very gradually assumed. In the third stage the line has disappeared, leaving the white spots. In the fourth the caterpillars have become very variable, but are generally much darker than before, and have a number of white dots under the spots. In the fifth stage there is a second row of white spots under the first. The caterpillars not being good to eat, there is, as has been already pointed out, no need for, nor attempt at, concealment. Now if we compare the mature caterpillars of other species of the genus, we shall find that they represent phases in the develop ment of D. euphorbia. D. hippophae, for instance, even when full grown, is a plain green, with only a trace of the line, and corresponds, therefore, with a very early stage of D. euphorbia; D. zygophylli of south Russia, has the line, and represents the second stage of D. euphorbia; Deiliphila livornica has the line and the row of spots, and represents, therefore, the third stage; lastly, D. vespertilio and D. galii have progressed further, and lost the longitudinal line, but they never acquire the second row of spots which characterize the last stage of D. euphorbiæ. Professor Weissmann's memoir, from which these facts are taken, is most suggestive, and opens up many points of interest. For such inquiries as this, the larvæ of lepidoptera are particularly suitable, because they live an exposed life; the different species even of the same genus often feed on different plants, and are therefore exposed to different conditions, and last, not least, because we know more about the larvæ of the lepidoptera than of any other insects. The larvæ of ants all live in the dark; they are fed by the perfect ants, and being, therefore, all subject to very similar conditions, are all very much alike. It would puzzle even a good naturalist to determine the species of an ant larva, while, as we all know, the caterpillars of butterflies and moths are as easy to distinguish as the butterflies and moths; they differ from one another as much as, sometimes more than, the perfect insect. There are five principal types of coloring among caterpillars. Those which live inside wood, or leaves, or underground, are generally of a uniform pale line; the small leaf-eating caterpillars are green, like the leaves on which they feed. The other three types may, si parva licet componere magnis, be compared with the three types of coloring among cats. There are the ground cats, such as the lion or puma, which are brownish or sand color, like the open places they frequent. So also caterpillars which conceal themselves by day at the roots of their food-plant tend, as we have seen, even if originally green, to assume the color of earth. The spotted or eyed cats, such as the leopard, live among trees; and their peculiar coloring renders them less conspicuous by mimicking spots of light which penetrate through foliage. So also many caterpillars are marked with spots, eyes, or patches of color. Lastly, there are the jungle cats, of which the tiger is a typical species, and which have stripes, rendering them very difficult to see among the brown grass which they frequent. It may, perhaps, be said that this comparison fails, because the stripes of tigers are perpendicular, while those of caterpillars are either longitudinal or oblique. This, however, so far from constituting a real difference, confirms the explanation, because in each case the direction of the lines follows those of the foliage. The tiger, walking horizontally on the ground, has transverse bars; the caterpillar, clinging to the grass in a vertical position, has longitudinal lines, while those which live on large veined leaves have oblique lines like the oblique | far as he took little pains to conceal his ribs of the leaves. opinions. But if there was anything likely to cure him of prejudices it was to see them mimicked in the faithful and loving mirror now always by his side; for how could he help laughing at the unintentional distortions? He had been a bitter opponent of the Second Empire, while that bubble still glittered in the political atmosphere; but surely that was no reason why Lady Sylvia should positively refuse to remain in Paris? Thus, then, I think, we see reasons for many at any rate of the variations of color and markings in caterpillars, which at first sight seem so fantastic and inexplicable. I should, however, produce an impression very different from that which I wish to convey, were I to lead you to suppose that all these varieties have been explained or are understood. Far from it, they still offer a large field for study; nevertheless, I venture to think the evidence now brought forward, however imperfectly, is at least sufficient to justify the conclusion that there is not a hair or a line, not a spot or a color, for which there is not a reason, which has not a purpose or a meaning in the economy of JOHN LUBBOCK. nature. "Gracious goodness," said he, "have you acquired a personal dislike for thirty millions of people? You may take my word for it, Sylvia, that as all you are likely to know about the French is by travelling among them, they are the nicest people in the world, so far as that goes. Look at the courtesy of the officials-look at the trouble a working-man or a peasant, will take to put you in the right road. Believe me, you may go further and fare worse. Wait, for example, till you make your first plunge into Germany. Wait till you see the Germans on board a Rhine steamer their manners to strangers, their habits of eating- "" "And then?" she said, "am I to form my opinion of the Germans from that? Do foreigners form their opinion of England by looking at a steamer-load of people going to Margate? 66 Sylvia," said he, "I command you to love the French." "I won't," she said. laugh was not altogether against her. From that moment he determined to seize every opportunity of pointing out to her the virtues of the French. MARRIAGE is in legal phrase the "highest consideration; even the cold and unromantic eye of the law perceives that the fact of a woman giving herself up, But this defiant disobedience was only body and soul, to a man, is more than an the curious result of a surrender of her equivalent for any sort of marriage settle- own opinions. She was prepared to disment. But at no period of the world's like thirty millions of human beings history was it ever contemplated that a merely because he had expressed detestawoman's immediate duty, on becoming a tion of Louis Napoleon. And when he wife, was forthwith to efface her own in-ended the argument with a laugh, the dividuality. Now this was what Lady Sylvia deliberately set about doing, in the first flush of her wifely devotion. As she had married the very source and fountainhead of all earthly wisdom, what use was there in her retaining opinions of her own? Henceforth she was to have always at her side the lawgiver, the arbiter, the infallible authority; she would surrender to his keeping all her beliefs just as she implicitly surrendered her trunks. She never thought twice about her new dresses: what railway-guard could withstand that terrible, commanding eye? Now, little has been said to the point in these pages about Balfour, if it has not been shown that he was a man of violent prejudices. Perhaps he was not unlike other people in that respect; except in so It Of course it was very delightful to him to have for his companion one who came quite fresh to all those wonders of travel which lie close around our own door. One does not often meet nowadays with a young lady who has not seen, for example, the Rhine under moonlight. Lady Sylvia had never been out of England. seemed to her that she had crossed interminable distances, and left her native country in a different planet altogether, when she reached Brussels, and she could not understand her husband when he said that in the Rue Montague de la Cour he had always the impression that he had just stepped round the corner from Regent Street. And she tried to imagine what she would do in these remote places of the earth if she were all by herself without this self-reliant guide and champion, who seemed to care no more for the awful and mysterious officials about railway-stations and the entrances to palaces than he would for the humble and familiar English policeman. The great deeds of chivalry were poor in her eyes compared with the splendid battle waged by her husband against extortion; the field of Waterloo was nearly witnessing another fearful scene of bloodshed, all because of a couple of francs. Then the Rhine, on the still moonlight night, from the high balcony in Cologne, with the colored lights of the steamers moving to and fro surely it was he alone who was the creator of this wonderful scene. That he was the creator of some of her delight in it was probable enough. get the Kölnische or the Allgemeine, and glance at the brief telegram headed Grossbrittannien, which told all that was considered to be worth telling about his native country. Or, together, they would clamber up through the warm vineyards to the rocky heights by Roland's Tower, and there let the dreamy hours go by in watching the shadows cross the blue mountains, in following the small steamers and the greater rafts as they passed down the stream, in listening to the tinkling of the cattle-bells in the valley below. How many times a day did Balfour cross over by the swinging ferry to the small bathinghouse on the other side, and there plunge into the clear, cold, rushing green waters? Somehow the days passed. And, on the whole, they passed pleasantly. In England there was absolutely nothing going on that could claim any one's attention; the first absolute hush of the recess was unbroken even by those Finally, they settled down in the little wandering voices that, later on, murmur village of Rolandseck; and now, in this of politics in unfrequented places. All quiet retreat, after the hurry and bustle of the world had gone idling; if a certain travelling was over and gone, they were young lady had wished to assume at once thrown more directly on each other's the role she had sketched out for herself society, and left to find out whether they -of becoming the solace and comfort of could find in the companionship of each the tired legislator - there was no chance other a sufficient means of passing the for her in England at least. Perhaps, on time. That, indeed, is the peril of the the whole, she was better occupied here honeymoon period, and it has been the in learning something about the nature of origin of a fair amount of mischief. You the man with whom she proposed to spend take a busy man away from all his ordi- a lifetime. And here, too, in these quiet nary occupations, and you take a young solitudes, Balfour occasionally abandoned girl away from all her domestic and other his usual bantering manner, and gave her pursuits, while as yet neither knows very glimpses of a deep under-current of feelmuch about the other, and while they haveing, of the existence of which not even his no common objects of interest - -no busi- most intimate friends were aware. When, ness affairs, nor house affairs, nor chil- as they walked alone in the still evenings, dren to talk about - and you expect them with the cool wind stirring the avenues of to amuse each other day after day, and walnut-trees, and the moonlight beginning day after day. Conversation, in such cir- to touch the mists lying about Nonnencumstances, is apt to dwindle down into werth and over the river, he talked to her very small rills indeed, unless when it is as he had never talked to any human feared that silence may be construed into being before. And curiously enough, when regret, and then a forced effort is made to his love for this newly-found companion pump up the waters. Morcover, Roland- sought some expression that would satisfy seck, though one of the most beautiful himself, he found it in snatches of old places in the world, is a place in which songs that his nurse, a Lowland Scotchone finds it desperately hard to pass the woman, had sung to him in his childhood. time. There is the charming view, no He had never read these lyrics. He knew doubt, and the Balfours had corner rooms, nothing of their literary value. It was whence they could see, under the chang- only as echoes that they came into his ing lights of morning, of midday, of sun- memory now; and yet they satisfied him set, and moonlight, the broad and rushing in giving something of form to his own river, the picturesque island, the wooded fancies. He did not repeat them to her; and craggy heights, and the mystic range but as he walked with her, these old of the Drachenfels. But the days were phrases, and chance refrains, seemed to still, sleepy, monotonous. Balfour seated suggest themselves quite naturally. Surely in the garden just over the river, would it was of her that this was written? VOL. XVIII. 903 LIVING AGE. O saw ye my wee thing, and saw ye my ain | was not so to the object of it. She had thing, And saw ye my true love down on yon lea? Crossed she the meadow yestreen at the gloaming, Sought she the burnie where flowers the haw-tree? Her hair it is lint-white, her skin it is milkwhite, Dark is the blue o' her saft rollin' ee, Her bower casement is latticed wi' flowers, She waves the ringlets frae her cheek grown accustomed to it. To her it was but natural language. Doubtless she had been taught to believe that all affection expressed itself in that way. Here, again, she tried to school herself. Convinced by these rare moments of self-disclosure that the love he bore her was the deepest and strongest feeling of his nature, she would be content to do without continual protestation of it. She would have no lip-service. Did not reticence in such matters arise from the feeling that there were emotions and relations too sacred to be continually flaunted before the public gaze? Was she to distrust the man who had married her because he did not prate of his affection for her And her cheeks seem touched wi' the finger o' within the hearing of servants? God, My bonnie Lady Ann! He He forgot that he was in the Rhineland the very cradle of lyrical romance. did not associate this fair companion with any book whatever; the feelings that she stirred were deeper down than that, and they found expression in phrases that had years and years ago become a part of his nature. He forgot all about Uhland, Heine, and the rest of the sweet and pathetic singers who have thrown a glamor over the Rhine-valley; it was the songs of his boyhood that occurred to him. Like dew on the gowan lying Is the fa' o' her fairy feet, The lines are simple enough. Perhaps they are even commonplace. But they sufficed. It must be said, however, that Balfour was the reverse of an effusive person; and this young wife very speedily discovered that his bursts of tender confidences were likely to be few and far between. He was exceedingly chary of using endearing phrases; more especially if there was a third person present. Now she had been used to elaborate and studied expressions of affection. There was a good deal of histrionics about Lord Willowby. He got into violent rages with his servants about the merest trifles; but these rages were as predetermined as those of the first Napoleon are said to have been; he found that it answered his purpose to have his temper feared. On the other hand, his affection for his daughter was expressed on all Occasions with profuse phraseology- -a phraseology that was a trifle mawkish and artificial when heard by others, but which The reasoning was admirable; the sentiment that prompted it altogether praiseworthy. But before a young wife begins to efface her personality in this fashion, she ought to make sure that she has no personality to speak of. Lady Sylvia had a good deal. In these Surrey solitudes, thrown greatly in on herself for compan ionship, she had acquired a certain seriousness of character. She had very defilife; she had decided opinions on many nite conceptions of the various duties of points; she had, like other folks, a firmly fixed prejudice or two. For her to imagine that she could wipe out her own individuality, as if it were a sum on a slate, and inscribe in its stead a whole series of new opinions, was mere folly. It was prompted by the most generous of motives; but it was folly none the less. Obviously, too, it was a necessary corollary of this effort at self-surrender, or rather self-effacement, that her husband should not be made aware of it; she would be to him, not what she was, but what she thought she ought to be. Hyper-subtleties of fancy and feeling? the result of delicate rearing, a sensitive temperament, and a youth spent much in solitary self-communion? Perhaps they were; but they were real for all that. They were not affectations, but facts facts involving as important issues as the simpler feelings of less complex and cultivated natures. To her they were so real, so all-important, that the whole current of her life was certain to be guided by them. During this pleasant season, but one slight cloud crossed the shining heaven of their new life. They had received letters in the morning; in the evening, as they sate at dinner, Lady Sylvia suddenly said |