The Making of Species 



day-time, the combination ceases to be effective 

 in the dark. He suggests that red and black is 

 a self-effacing rather than a warning pattern. 

 He further points out that several kinds of harm- 

 less snakes have the same colouring and pattern. 

 "There seems," he says, "to be no reason why 

 we should not call these cases of mimicry ; and 

 yet this is most likely a wrong interpretation, 

 since such harmless snakes are also found in 

 districts where the Elaps does not occur, not only 

 in Mexico, but likewise in far-distant parts of 

 the world, where neither elapines nor any other 

 similarly coloured poisonous snakes exist. To 

 interpret this as an instance of ' warning 

 colours ' in a perfectly harmless snake, which 

 has no chance of mimicry, amounts in such 

 cases to nonsense, and we have to look for a 

 different explanation upon physiological and 

 other grounds." 



It is, to say the least of it, significant that all 

 the opposition to the theory of protective coloura- 

 tion comes from those who observe nature first 

 hand, while the warmest supporters of the theory 

 are cabinet naturalists and museum zoologists. 



In the case of nocturnal creatures, as Dr H. 

 Robinson very sagely points out (Knowledge, 

 January 1909), the value for protective purposes 

 of any given colouration must depend very 

 largely on the state of the moon. "It was," he 

 writes, "a common experience in the South 



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