TRANSMUTABLE. 73 



the colour of the plumage is owing both to pig- 

 ment and organic sculpturing. Thus, as Mr. 

 Tristram has remarked, the quail or the grouse of 

 the desert have a desert colour. The humming 

 bird's colour, on the other hand, is entirely pro- 

 duced by sculpture on the feathers, and it feeds 

 chiefly upon the nectar of flowers, which, we 

 may fairly assume, contains no colour pigment. 



Are we then to say that the exquisite and 

 brilliant and harmonious plumage of the humming 

 bird is due to a mere accidental variation? or 

 that the protecting colour of the beetle or the 

 grouse, which are partly due to organic structure, 

 as in the humming bird, and partly to the organic 

 functions of digestion and assimilation, and the 

 deposit of pigment so formed? am I to be told, 

 or am I requested to answer the absurdity, that 

 this beautiful evidence of design, in the special 

 creation of the animal, is due to accident? The 

 answer to this query is found in No. 5 of Mr. 

 Darwin's illustrations of c 'natural selection." We 

 are there distinctly told that an ''accidental de- 

 viation in the size and form of the body, or in 

 the curvature and length of the proboscis, etc.," 

 might ultimately produce by descent an important 

 alteration in the organic structure of the animal, 

 and he adds to this, the bungling error of 

 supposing the change to take place in the hive-bee, 

 by which it might reach the nectar in the long 

 tube of the corolla of the red clover, though un- 

 fortunately for the illustration, the worker hive-bee 

 is barren, and does not propagate its kind at all ! 



