CHAPTER VI. 



SPOTS AND STRIPES. 



BEARING in mind the great tendency to repetition and symmetry 

 of marking we have shown to exist, it becomes an interesting 

 question to work out the origin of the peculiar spots, stripes, loops 

 and patches which are so prevalent in nature. The exquisite eye- 

 spots of the argus pheasant, the peacock, and many butterflies and 

 moths have long excited admiration and scientific curiosity, and have 

 been the subject of investigation by Darwin,* the Rev. H. H. 

 Higgins, t Weismann, } and others, Darwin having paid especial 

 attention to the subject. 



His careful analysis of the ocelli or eye-spots in the Argus pheasant 

 and peacock have led him to conclude that they are peculiar modifi- 

 cations of the bars of colour as shown by his drawings. Our own 

 opinion, founded upon a long series of observations, is that this is 

 not the whole case, but that, in the first place, bars are the result 

 of the coalescence of spots. It is not pretended that a bar of colour 

 is the result of the running together of a series of perfect ocelli like 

 those in the so-called tail of the peacock, but merely that spots of 

 colour are the normal primitive commencement of colouring, and 

 that these spots may be developed on the one hand into ocelli or eye- 

 spots, and on the other into bars or even into great blotches of a 

 uniform tint, covering large surfaces. 



Let us first take the cases of abnormal marking as shown in 

 disease. An ordinary rash, as in measles, begins as a set of minute 

 red spots, and the same is the case with small pox, the pustules of 

 which sometimes run together, and becoming confluent form bars, 



* Descent of Man, vol. ii., p. 132. f Quart. Journ. Sci., July 1868, p. 325. 



t Studies in the Theory of Descent. 



