Mimicry Among Animals 



to ancestral forms" for others, — have all been 

 shown to be beset with difficulties, and the two 

 latter to be directly contradicted by some of 

 the most constant and most remarkable of 

 the facts to be accounted for. 



The important part that protective "re- 

 semblance" has played in determining the 

 colours and markings of many groups of animals 

 will enable us to understand the meaning of 

 one of the most striking facts in nature, the 

 uniformity in the colours of the vegetable as 

 compared with the wonderful diversity of the 

 animal world. There appears no good reason 

 why trees and shrubs should not have been 

 adorned with as many varied hues and as 

 strikingly designed patterns as birds and butter- 

 flies, since the gay colours of flowers show that 

 there is no incapacity in vegetable tissues to 

 exhibit them. But even flowers themselves 

 present us with none of those wonderful designs, 

 those complicated arrangements of stripes and 

 dots and patches of colour, that harmonious 

 blending of hues in lines and bands and shaded 

 spots, which are so general a feature in insects. 

 It is the opinion of Mr. Darwin that we owe 

 much of the beauty of flowers to the necessity 

 of attracting insects to aid in their fertilization, 

 and that much of the development of colour 

 in the animal world is due to "sexual selection," 

 colour being universally attractive, and thus 

 leading to its propagation and increase; but 

 while fully admitting this, it will be evident 

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