xxx STUDIES IN THE EVOLUTION OF ANIMALS 



The bibliography of spots and stripes is not very abundant, 

 and biologists may perhaps have depended a little too much on 

 natural selection, as being sufficient to explain the creation of 

 everything. 



The scope of some of the following studies is to show that the 

 spotting and striping of mammals, in their origin, are not purely 

 the results of natural selection from beginning to end. I believe 

 them to have been originally inherited features, coming from very 

 remote ancestors, and altered in many ways by transmission from 

 species to species, from genus to genus. 



So many persons are interested in Horses that to understand 

 in some way the origin of their curious markings would add to the 

 interest of these animals. Similarly it would add to the interest we 

 take in our domestic animals, if we could satisfactorily account for 

 the spotting and striping of our Cats and Dogs, and other mammals. 

 Our surroundings would again become peopled with the remote and 

 extinct ancestors from which those we now see have descended. 



The evolutionist with his * eyes open,' can find interest in 

 Leopard skins, in the dapples of Horses, and in the markings 

 of other animals ; in the coloration of the legs of Horses, Dogs, 

 Cats, and in a hundred other things which the non-evolutionist 

 would pass by as ordinary insignificant phenomena, and totally 

 void of interest. Fifty lives would not suffice for the evolutionist 

 to exhaust the interest of things he may see around him. It is all 

 a study of the real method of creation. 



It is usual for people to think of the Horse as an animal fit for 

 draught, for riding, hunting, racing, etc., but the evolutionist sees 

 both in his internal structure and in his external coloration, relation- 

 ships to animals which ordinary people think have nothing to do 

 with the Horse. 



We shall see that rosetted animals must have been legions 



