128 MIMICRY, AND OTHER PROTECTIVE 



here enumerated are equally deceptive to them as to 

 ourselves, then both their powers of vision and their 

 faculties of perception and emotion, must be essentially 

 of the same nature as our own a fact of high philo- 

 sophical importance in the study of our own nature 

 and our true relations to the lower animals. 



Conclusion. 



Although such a variety of interesting facts have 

 been already accumulated, the subject we have been 

 discussing is one of which comparatively little is really 

 known. The natural history of the tropics has never 

 yet been studied on the spot with a full appreciation 

 of " what to observe " in this matter. The varied 

 ways in which the colouring and form of animals serve 

 for their protection, their strange disguises as vege- 

 table or mineral substances, their wonderful mimicry 

 of other beings, offer an almost unworked and inex- 

 haustible field of discovery for the zoologist, and will 

 assuredly throw much light on the laws and conditions 

 which have resulted in the wonderful variety of colour, 

 shade, and marking which constitutes one of the most 

 pleasing characteristics of the animal world, but the 

 immediate causes of which it has hitherto been most 

 difficult to explain. 



If I have succeeded in showing that in this wide 

 and picturesque domain of nature, results which have 

 hitherto been supposed to depend either upon those 

 incalculable combinations of laws which we term 

 chance or upon the direct volition of the Creator, are 



