1 8 Mr. Grant Allen's Botanical Fables 



whether there be not evolutionary difficulties as well as 

 evolutionary arguments to be found there. 



First, let us look up to the tops of the elms, where the 

 Rooks are as I write so busy with their nests. How 

 came they to develop their nest-building faculty ? 

 These large conspicuous structures must be placed on 

 the tops of trees to be safe. The first building 

 of them must have been in such a position. But if 

 the ancestral rook had tried the experiment of estab- 

 lishing his household gods there before he had 

 acquired the present architectural skill would any 

 young rook have survived to carry his dusky race 

 down to the present day ? To build dry unbendable 

 sticks into a nest on a windy tree-top would seem to 

 be but to prepare for it the fate of the historic cradle 

 placed in a like position. I much doubt if, without 

 the aid of twine, the cleverest man living, although in 

 possession of an opposable thumb as to which gift 

 alone Mr. Grant Allen seems to say 1 have his 

 ancestors behaved better to him than those of a 

 donkey could with such materials construct a nest 

 which should withstand the gentlest breeze, let alone a 

 south-western gale. 



This is, at least, something of a problem. If from 

 the tree-tops we turn our eyes down to the waters 

 under the earth, we shall meet with another. How 

 come the backs of fishes so closely to resemble the 

 surface above which these fish live ? How, to take 

 particular examples, does the Loach come so exactly to 

 mimic the stones at the bottom of the brook, or the 

 Skate and Flounder, as we see in aquariums, the gravel 

 or sand on which they respectively dwell? It is not 

 enough to say that "nature" enables them for protec- 

 tive purposes thus to hide themselves. Take a dozen, 

 or a score, or a hundred fish, and in no two are the 

 markings the same ; there is every variety of detail, but 

 one general effect of resemblance to the common object, 

 just as in a long gallery of deal doors which a skilful 

 1 Vignettes from Nature^ p. 90. 



