300 NATURAL SCIENCE. November. 



from the lizard, but when that way of escape was clearly closed it 

 acted its disguise. If we could find any reason to believe that the 

 consciousness, or volitions, of an animal may be among the iniluences 

 which have worked towards the evolution of its colour and form, then 

 that is the direction in which I should look with most hope for the 

 wanting explanation of these phenomena of mimicry and some others. 

 And though, as Mr. Beddard well says in his book on Animal 

 Coloration : "At every step in animal coloration we are met with 

 closed doors which can only be unlocked by keys furnished by an 

 intimate chemical and physiological knowledge such as we do not at 

 present possess," there are not wanting facts that appear to point in the 

 direction I have indicated. Darwin's explanation of the phenomenon 

 of blushing is founded on the fact that " attention, or consciousness, 

 concentrated on almost any part of the body produces some direct 

 physical effect on it." From this he goes on to argue that " whenever 

 we believe that others are censuring, or even considering, our 

 personal appearance, our attention is vividly directed to the outer 

 and visible parts of our bodies, and of all such parts we are most 

 sensitive about our faces, as no doubt has been the case during many 

 past generations. Through force of association the same effects will 

 tend to follow whenever we think that others are considering, or 

 censuring, our actions or character." " By frequent reiteration 

 during numberless generations the process will have become so 

 habitual, in association with the belief that others are thinking of us, 

 that even a suspicion of their depreciation will suffice to relax the 

 capillaries, without any conscious thought about our faces." We 

 have Darwin on our side, then, if we believe that some effect may be 

 produced on the skin of an animal's body, not only by its attention 

 being directed to its own appearance, but by anything which has 

 become associated in its consciousness with its own appearance. 



Now let us turn to the chameleon. I once kept a reptile of that 

 genus in a birdcage for six months, and grew pretty intimate with it. 

 Its ordinary colour in the daytime, if there were no green leaves in 

 the cage, was a dark smoky brown, sometimes with numerous, small, 

 whitish spots ; but at times, when the sun shone on it, it would 

 indulge in a display of rich green, beautifully dappled with large, 

 irregular marks of a lighter shade. If I approached it at such a time, 

 it would fix one of its grotesque, rotating eyes on me, and, remaining 

 perfectly motionless, change in a few seconds to a tint in harmony 

 with the objects surrounding it. Absolutely ignorant as we may be 

 of the way in which this change was brought about, two things are 

 quite clear. The first is that the change resulted from the chameleon's 

 becoming conscious that it was observed. It may have been quite 

 involuntary, in which case Darwin's explanation of blushing fits 

 exactly. Conspicuousness in its appearance being associated in the 

 chameleon's mind with danger, the presence of danger affected its 

 whole skin just as if its attention had been concentrated on its own 



