ANIMALS AS MODIFIED BY ENVIRONMENT. 243 



ill on account of it. The adoe of some former (deceased) magis- 

 trate is then called upon to turn away the evil ; and when any- 

 one is cursed, he endeavors to ward off the effect of the impreca- 

 tion by an offering. Adoes are also made and offered to drive 

 off evil spirits or to warn off the spirits of pestilence that may be 

 apx3roaching the village. The occasions for offering are, in fact, 

 innumerable, and persons who suffer much from illness are made 

 poor on account of them. 



The adoes are supposed to have originated from above ; and 

 the kinds of wood out of which the idols are made are the chil- 

 dren, turned into wood, of the divinities which, according to one 

 version of the legends, sprang from chips of wood, and were sent 

 down to heal the diseases of the earth. 



Diseases which are supposed to have been produced by curses 

 and enchantments are also met by offerings ; but a certain list 

 of disorders, which are caused by a tree that is supposed to have 

 arisen from the spirit of a curse which was uttered by a certain 

 chief against his townsmen — including fevers, disorders of the 

 stomach, and contagious skin-diseases — have to be treated with 

 medicine. The field of superstition is much better tilled by the 

 Niha people than are their rice-fields. — Translated for the Popu- 

 lar Science Monthly from the Allgemeine Missions-Zeitschrift, 



ANIMALS AS MODIFIED BY ENVIRONMENT.* 



By J. B. STEERE, 



PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY IN UICHIGAN UNIVEESITT. 



THE close connection between animals and their surroundings 

 is generally recognized both by those believing in creation 

 by design and by those holding to evolution. This connection 

 is usually supposed to be restricted to the adaptation of certain 

 organs to specific facts of surrounding environment. Often- 

 quoted examples of such related organs and conditions are the 

 eye and light, and the ear and sound. 



In addition to this undoubted adjustment of single organs to 

 individual conditions of environment, there is reason for believ- 

 ing that each natural division of the great animal types, the 

 most fundamental as well as the most trivial, is adapted in the 

 same sense to its own special fact of environment. In other 

 words, all modifications of type have been in the line of adapta- 

 tion to special conditions ; and, where such modifications are 



* Abstract of a paper on "The Importance of Individual Facts of Environment in the 

 Formation of Natural Groups of Animals," read before the American Association for the 

 Advancement of Science, Ann Arbor meeting, 1885. 



