My dear Mr Darwin

I have sent to the post stamped & registered, your packet of Manuscript, which I hope will reach you safely. You will see my suggested alterations all marked lightly in pencil in their places & will notice that they nearly all relate to the orthography of scientific names of Insects—a very small Matter!¹

As to the facts there is only one which I do not clearly understand: it is the rudiments of horns in ♀ of Onitis furcifer. I conclude, however, that you consider the indented or flattened (retuse) front part of thorax as the rudiment of horn formation. Well, it is so in effeminate males of Phanæus onthophagus & so forth & I presume you are correct in so expressing the fact with regard to O. furcifer; but still some qualification in terms seems necessary.²

Other facts I have noted are additions to your stores. Of course I would not think of giving you new facts of those classes in which you have a superabundance already. But in one case—sexual dissimilarity of colours in Coleoptera,—you have clearly not enough. I have recently been working at Longicorns, a group in which an enormous amount of modification for mere ornament has taken place & I find that there are here many cases of sexual disparity of colours. The genera Mallaspis Pyrodes & Esmeralda, very large & beautiful Prionidæ Longicorns offer the most striking examples. In Esmeralda the two sexes have been placed in different genera partly on account of difference of colour. Many other genera in the tribe offer less striking cases.³

The reasoning I had not ought to touch & have not touched in the M.S.— I almost always agree with you & have less scruple on this account to suggest a modification of your view of females not being made dull-coloured by selection, which will bring your opinion & Wallace’s nearly into harmony.⁴ It is this—the necessity of females being dull-coloured for protection is true, but they have not been made dull from former brighter hues, but have simply been kept dull by natural selection steadily eliminating all tendency to brightness. This will not disagree with your clenching & true argument against Wallace that females of a genus are truer in colour to the generic type than males.⁵

Yours sincerely | H W Bates