Nothing would please me more than to find
evidence of males selecting the more attractive females [? _in
pigeons_[69]]: I have for months been trying to persuade myself of this.
There is the case of man in favour of this belief, and I know in hybrid
[_lizards'_[69]] unions of males preferring particular females, but alas!
not guided by colour. Perhaps I may get more evidence as I wade through
my twenty years' mass of notes.

I am not shaken about the female protected butterflies: I will grant
(only for argument) that the life of the male is of _very_ little value;
I will grant that the males do not vary; yet why has not the protective
beauty of the female been transferred by inheritance to the male? The
beauty would be a gain to the male, as far as we can see, as a
protection; and I cannot believe that it would be repulsive to the
female as she became beautiful. But we shall never convince each other.
I sometimes marvel how truth progresses, so difficult is it for one man
to convince another unless his mind is vacant. Nevertheless, I myself to
a certain extent contradict my own remark; for I believe _far more_ in
the importance of protection than I did before reading your articles.

I do not think you lay nearly stress enough in your articles on what you
admit in your letter, viz. "there seems to be some production of
vividness ... of colour in the male independent of protection." This I
am making a chief point; and have come to your conclusion so far that I
believe that intense colouring in the female sex is often checked by
being dangerous.

That is an excellent remark of yours about no known case of the male
_alone_ assuming protective colours; but in the cases in which
protection has been gained by dull colours, I presume that sexual
selection would interfere with the male losing his beauty. If the male
alone had acquired beauty as a protection, it would be most readily
overlooked, as males are so often more beautiful than their females.
Moreover, I grant that the loss of the male is somewhat less precious
and thus there would be less rigorous selection with the male, so he
would be less likely to be made beautiful through Natural Selection for
protection. (This does not apply to sexual selection, for the greater
the excess of males and the less precious their lives, so much the
better for sexual selection.) But it seems to me a good argument, and
very good if it could be thoroughly established.--Yours most sincer