A GAME OF HIDE AND SEEK. 



665 



sessors no harm or good," an ingenuous assumption characteristic 

 of many of the pages of that naturalist's recent book, in which the 

 attempt to keep on both sides of the Darwinistic fence has left the 

 author very much astraddle. Another English naturalist, Professor 

 Poulton, has suggested that tiie bright under wings lead the pursuing 

 bird to catch the insect by them, the wing membrane giving way 

 without serious injury to the moth. But this seems to me a strained 

 and inadequate explanation, much less satisfactory than the one 

 afforded by the suggestion of another celebrated English entomolo- 

 gist, Lord Walsingham, who in a presidential address before the 

 Entomological Society of London delivered the following passages: 



" My attention was lately drawn to a passage in Herbert Spencer's 

 Essay on the Morals of Trade. He writes : ' As when tasting dif- 

 ferent foods or wines the palate is disabled by something strongly 

 flavored from appreciating the more delicate flavor of another thing 

 afterward taken, so with the other organs of sense a temporary dis- 

 ability follows an excessive stimulation. This holds not only with 

 the eyes in judging of colors, but also with the fingers in judging 

 of texture.' 



" Here I think we have an explanation of the principle on which 

 protection is undoubtedly afforded to certain insects by the possession 

 of bright coloring on such parts of their wings or bodies as can be 

 instantly covered and concealed at will. It is an undoubted fact, and 

 one which must have 

 been observed by near- 

 ly all collectors of in- 

 sects abroad, and per- 

 haps also in our own 

 country, that it is more 

 easy to follow with the 

 eye the rapid move- 

 ments of a more con- 

 spicuous insect soberly 

 and uniformly colored 

 than those of an insect 

 capable of changing in 

 an instant the appear- 

 ance it presents. The eye, having once fixed itself upon an object 

 of a certain form and color, conveys to the mind a corresponding im- 

 pression, and, if that impression is suddenly found to be unreliable, 

 the instruction which the mind conveys to the eye becomes also unre- 

 liable, and the rapidity with which the impression and consequent in- 

 struction can be changed can not always compete successfully with the 

 rapid transformation effected by the insect in its effort to escape." 



Carolina Lo(;ust in Flight. 



