ADAPTATION AND SELECTION IN NATURE. 119 



a desert. Some of us have noticed that in Algeria the rainfall is 

 al)out the same as in London and around — about 27 inches. On 

 the other hand the sun is intensely hot, the amount of daily sun- 

 shine being far greater. During the summer the streams dry up 

 so that you may see in the middle of the waste a stream bed with 

 nothing in it as we know. Everyone travelling in the East is 

 familiar with these things. It was my lot last year to see them 

 for the first time. As the camels travel across the desert, if there 

 is no rain, innumei"able little beetles fashion the droppings of the 

 camels into balls in the dust and lay their eggs inside, and in half 

 an hour there is nothing but dust. Of course these instances may 

 be multiplied to a great extent when we care to study the subject, 

 as Dr. Walter Kidd has done in his paper on " Design in Nature," 

 for he has shown, over and over again, how wonderful are the 

 personal adaptations of creatures to the universe. 



Rev. F. A. Walker, D.D. — The lecturer has made a very 

 interesting remark on the inaccurate and inadequate foi'mulas or 

 recognized terms in common use by scientists, and I very much wish 

 that Dr. Kidd could give us some others. I think he has shown 

 that he is well able to give us some other terms for those which 

 certainly do not, to my mind, convey the meaning for which they 

 are intended. I do not myself understand what is meant by 

 " natural mimicry." I have already spoken here against that 

 term. I take it that mimicry means the act of a conscious agent 

 voluntarily copying another for a little time, and then dropping it 

 again just at will. It means that we copy mannerisms, or words, 

 or gestures, or tricks, or habits of our fellow-creatures. I do not 

 call it natural mimicry because the moth is stamped, directly it 

 comes from the chrysalis, with no volition on its own part, with 

 the size or colour of the butterfly, because it still has a moth- 

 shaped body. It is stamped by the Creator in that way, and it 

 continues so to its death ; perhaps the colour is a little faded 

 in autumn. So with the dragon fly, known as Synipettim 

 flaveolum, it is a little different in colour, but those are 

 only minor matters of detail — there is no will of its own in 

 the matter. What I should call mimicry, on the part of an 

 organic object would be, for instance, if you take a chameleon 

 as I have done, and put it in a box with Httle light. It then gets 

 a dusky dark green, and if you tickle its cheeks it gets sulky and 

 changes colour again. If you put it on a myrtle where it can 



