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_9 St. Mark's Crescent, Regent's Park, N.W. Nov. 19, 1866._
Dear Darwin,--Many thanks for the fourth edition of the "Origin," which
I am glad to see grows so vigorously at each moult, although it
undergoes no metamorphosis. How curious it is that Dr. Wells should so
clearly have seen the principle of Natural Selection fifty years ago,
and that it should have struck no one that it was a great principle of
universal application in nature!
We are going to have a discussion on "Mimicry, as producing Abnormal
Sexual Characters," at the Entomological to-night. I have a butterfly
(Diadema) of which the female is metallic blue, the male dusky brown,
contrary to the rule in all other species of the genus, and in almost
all insects; but the explanation is easy--it mimics a metallic
_Euploea_, and so gets a protection perhaps more efficient than its
allies derive from their sombre colours, and which females require much
more than males. I read a paper on this at the British Association. Have
you the report published at Nottingham in a volume by Dr.
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