WCP2501

[1]¹

Kirton-in-Lindsey

28 Jan. 1912.

Sir

A passage in your "World of Life",² in which you argue against butterflies attracting each other by marking and coloration, has reminded me of an experience of Miss Mina Fowler — the daughter of a cousin of the late Professor Fowler, who was the president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

While in Florida, some years ago she observed that male swallow-tail butterflies were aware of the sex of a female before the moment of its appearance of a perfect insect, for several of them would hover about it waiting for it to emerge.

Miss Fowler is at the present time visiting friends in New Zealand. In a letter, posted at Lyttleton, dated Dec. 20, 1911, she says, “It is all very beautiful, but there are no native birds to be seen, except a little white gull, or Tern. Every year they [2] grow rarer. They are nearly all honey or insect feeders and die out as the bush is cleared, or are killed by the introduced English birds. Goldfinches are everywhere and are as common as the sparrows, and larks are all over the mountains.”

How man devastates, even when he has no direct intention of devastating. Caliban cried :—

"you taught me language; and my profit on 't Is, I know how to curse."

Homo sapiens might say :—

"you gave me a self-conscious brain ^mind; and my profit on 't is, I know how to destroy."

In Buller's Manual of the Birds of New Zealand (1882)³ I see that several birds of the north Island are represented by a closely allied, but different, form in the South. For instance, the white-head (Orthonyx albicilla) north Island only. Native canary or yellow-head (Orthonyx ochrocephela) South Island only.

It is grievous that such witnesses to the truth [3] of evolution should be doomed to extinction in the near future.

While reading your remarks on the excessive development of Lower Animals before Extinction, I began speculating on this point. Will Man's end come through excessive development of brain?

Believe me| Yours faithfully | Mabel Peacock⁴ [signature]

(Sister of E A Woodruffe-Peacock,⁵ vicar of Cadney).