The Making of Species 



ing, who sets at naught the theory of cryptic 

 colouring by turning darker in winter ! The 

 same may be said of the Alpine chamois. 



The advocates of the theory of protective 

 colouring assert that the creatures which do not 

 turn white in winter are strong and active animals 

 which have no enemies to fear. 



This contention is met by F. C. Selous as fol- 

 lows (African Nature Notes and Reminiscences, 

 p. 9): " According to the experience of Arctic 

 travellers, large numbers of young musk oxen 

 are annually killed by wolves. . . . Nothing, I 

 think, is more certain than that a far smaller per- 

 centage of so-called protectively coloured giraffes 

 are killed annually by lions in Africa than of 

 musk oxen by wolves in Arctic America." 



Another difficulty which confronts the Neo- 

 Wallaceian school is that, ex hypothesi, the 

 assumption of the white coat was gradual. 

 Hence the change in the direction of white- 

 ness cannot, in its first beginning, have been 

 of perceptible utility to an organism. How 

 then can natural selection have operated on it ? 



The transparency of pelagic organisms is fre- 

 quently cited as exemplifying cryptic colouring. 

 We all know that the common jelly-fish is as 

 transparent as glass. Floating on the surface of 

 the ocean are millions of tiny organisms, so 

 transparent as to be invisible to the human eye. 

 At first sight this certainly appears to be a 



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