PROFESSOR RIDGEWAY AND RACIAL ORIGINS 26 9 



resembles its Asiatic, but not its African, congeners in the 

 absence of a shoulder-stripe. 



Now, in the first place, it is quite incorrect to say, as 

 Prof. Ridgeway does, that the horse family has not migrated. 

 To even the non-scientific reader it will occur as a genus 

 eminently capable of migration. But the zoologists have 

 proof that the extinct South American horse wandered there 

 from North America, whilst as regards the species in the Old 

 World the only point at issue is whether they originated in 

 Europe, in Asia, or in Africa ; no one seriously asserts a 

 common development in all three continents. In discussing, 

 however, Prof. Ridgeway's view of the effect of climate on 

 colour — there is a strong tang of Erasmus Darwin about this — 

 one is met by the difficulty that he adduces no reason and 

 formulates no hypothesis why climate should of itself possess such 

 thaumaturgical virtues, why a tropical sun should favour black 

 and white stripes, or a dun colour should evolve under more tem- 

 perate skies. No tittle of reason is given to support this alleged 

 nexus of climate and colour; it is, and remains, as much an asser- 

 tion as, say, the supposed " sweet influence of the Pleiades " 

 on mundane affairs. Protective colouring does not apparently 

 find favour in the Professor's eyes, in fact he expressly denies it 

 in the case of the zebra. To combat his views is, indeed, like 

 combating the spectre of the Brocken ; the lacuna in the argu- 

 ment, the absence of the major premiss, imparts to them the air 

 of invincible intangibility affected by theological dogmas. But 

 most inquirers nowadays demand, and demand imperatively, 

 a reason why a cause should produce a specified effect. As 

 a matter of fact, the main factors affecting colouration, as a 

 myriad painstaking inquiries amply demonstrate, are explained 

 by the necessity for concealment in the struggle for existence, 

 combined to a lesser extent with the influence of heredity and 

 the advantages of ornaments attractive in courtship. And by 

 concealment is denoted concealment at the time of greatest 

 danger, especially at that of breeding. Without attempting an 

 exhaustive discussion of the colouration of the Equidce, one may 

 note that in this respect they differ no whit from the remainder 

 of observed living creatures. As various experiments and other 

 facts demonstrate, they spring from a striped ancestor, which 

 explains the survival of stripes on the back and shoulders 

 in otherwise uniformly coloured varieties. (Does Prof. 



