184 Inheritance of Acquired Characters 



as the secretion of gastric juice was originally a func- 

 tional adaptation of the wall of the stomach to certain 

 foods but finally is poured out before the foods them- 

 selves are ingested but only tasted, in consequence of 

 psychic associations; so the assimilation to the color of 

 the environment, which originally was a functional 

 adaptation of the elements of the skin producing the 

 color, the chromatophores, may have gradually come to 

 be produced in anticipation and finally exclusively by 

 the perception through the eyes of the color of the 

 environment. 



However that may be, all these facts show that far 

 from seeing in the protective colors of animals merely 

 the result of fortuitous variations which have become 

 fixed by natural selection just for their passive protective 

 function, we have legitimate reason for holding on the 

 contrary that usually they are the direct result of true 

 functional adaptation. 



In this way would be explained the possibility that 

 as soon as the color of the environment alters, the pro- 

 tective color of the animal might also become unstable 

 or disappear entirely, and one would not be compelled 

 to resort for the explanation of the phenomenon, as 

 Weismann is, to panmyxia or to any other complicated 

 process of natural selection. For this tendency to give 

 up the color can in this case also be attributed to the 

 simple circumstance that when the color of the environ- 

 ment was altered the functional stimulus ceased, which 

 was the sole cause of the color of the animal. 



It is true that Weismann points out certain cases 

 of more typical mimicry which seem to prove the cor- 

 rectness of his views very especially because they seem 

 to show that natural selection had undoubtedly been 



