THE WAY OF THE WILD 8 1 



selection tends to make it more so. On the other hand, the 

 color may be unfortunate, in which case the species will go 

 through the world with a perpetual handicap, except as selection 

 is able to tone it down and relieve it of some of its hardship. 



Color is not based upon utility, nor is it dependent for its 

 function upon the presence of light. Some of the most brilliantly 

 colored fishes reside in the depths of the sea, so remote that no 

 ray of light ever reaches them. Everything must have some 

 relation to light and therefore will have some color when brought 

 into its rays. If it reflects them all, it will be white ; if it absorbs 

 them all and reflects none, it will be black ; if it absorbs all but 

 the red, it will reflect those rays and we will call it red ; if it 

 absorbs the red and reflects only the yellow and the blue, we will 

 call it green, and so on with the infinite changes and combinations 

 that result through the relations of absorption and reflection. 



So we might go on indefinitely, showing how fits and adapta- 

 tions, with startling accuracy, arise after all in perfectly natural, 

 not to say inevitable, ways. These details are not the result of 

 design but of accident. 1 The design lies much farther back in 

 the great scheme of life, infinitely more complex and wonderful 

 than these details that strike our attention, and which exhibit 

 rather the variety of nature's design than a deliberate intent at 

 duplication or a determination to favor one species over another. 



With this glimpse into the way of the wild we are prepared 

 for a somewhat detailed discussion of the principal facts involved 

 in the further adaptation of animals and plants to the needs and 

 purposes of man. 



1 Those who might be inclined to object to the statement that every detail 

 in nature is in a large sense accidental should consider such cases as the sloth, 

 which is a grayish green in his natural haunts, but in captivity gradually loses 

 the greenish tinge and fades out to a dull gray. The reason of this is that the 

 greenish tinge was originally no part of the sloth, but was due to the green 

 chlorophyll of the minute algae that are enabled to live upon its hair, the 

 moist climate and the sluggish habits of the creature being both favorable to 

 the vegetable growth. Any number of equally striking instances could be 

 given to show that color is in its origin largely accidental. Of course under 

 natural selection only the more favorable cases could survive. 



