1 82 Inheritance of Acquired Characters 



Similarly, how can one escape attributing the colors 

 of butterflies' scales to functional adaptation when one 

 sees the golden red butterfly Polyommatus phlaeas change 

 its color and take on a black tint merely from transporting 

 it to warmer climates? 



Further, indubitable instances are known in which 

 the color of the environment stimulates the outer surface 

 of the animal directly or indirectly to take on the same 

 color. Thus some arctic animals and birds become per- 

 fectly white in winter, putting themselves thus in con- 

 formity with the general color of the environment. 

 Certain butterflies present phenomena of protective poly- 

 chromatism in the sense that they always take on the 

 color of their environment, and this should not appear 

 strange for there is nothing inadmissible in the sup- 

 position that a very sensitive skin can suffer much greater 

 discomfort when the light rays which strike it are of a 

 color different from its ow r n than when they are of a 

 like color with it. This discomfort would correspond 

 to the disagreeable sense of heat or cold which makes 

 itself felt over the surface of the body when its tem- 

 perature differs from that of its environment. 



Consequently if every functional adaptation of the 

 living substance to external agents consists in such a 

 modification of its own vital processes that these find in 

 the external agents no longer obstacles but rather co- 

 operative stimuli, one can understand the tendency of 

 every especially sensitive organ to make the color of 

 its surface conform with that of its environment. This 

 would not prevent the identity of colors from being of 



and Cesare Lombroso: Ancora dei caratteri acquisiti ; Paguri, Cam- 

 melli e Zebu. Rivista di Scienze Biologiche. Vol. II, No. 3. 1900. 

 P. 2-3. 



