62 THE GENESIS OF SPECIES. [CHAP. 



In poisonous serpents, also, we have structures which, 

 at all events, at first sight, seem positively hurtful to those 

 reptiles. Such are the rattle of the rattlesnake, and the 

 expanding neck of the cobra, the former seeming to warn 

 the ear of the intended victim, as the latter warns the eye. 

 It is true we cannot perhaps demonstrate that the victims 



RATTLESNAKE. 



are alarmed and warned, but, on Darwinian principles, they 

 certainly ought to be so. For the rashest and most incau- 

 tious of the animals preyed on would always tend to fall 

 victims, and the existing individuals being the long-de- 

 scended progeny of the timid and cautious, ought to have 

 an inherited tendency to distrust, among other things, both 



