LEAF AND TENDRIL 



colored — who shall say ? Which was first, the 

 sweetness or the color ? The flesh of the quail and 

 the partridge having become very delectable and 

 much sought after by many wild creatures, did 

 Nature make compensation by giving them their 

 assimilative plumage ? or were the two facts insep- 

 arable from the first ? Yet the flesh of the peacock 

 is said to be as delicate as that of the turkey. 



The sweetness of an animal's flesh is doubtless 

 determined by its food. I believe no one eats the 

 Western road-runner, though it is duller of color 

 than the turkey. Its food is mice, snakes, lizards, 

 centipedes, and other vermin. 



Thus far I can follow the protective-colorists, 

 but not much farther. 



Wallace goes to the extent of believing that even 

 nuts are protectively colored because they are not 

 to be eaten. But without the agency of birds and 

 the small rodents, the wingless nuts, such as chest- 

 nuts, acorns, hickory nuts, and butternuts, could 

 never get widely scattered; so that if they were 

 effectively concealed by their colors, this fact would 

 tend to their extinction. 



If the colors of animals were as vital a matter, 

 and the result of the same adaptive and selective 

 process, as their varied structures, which Darwin 

 and Wallace teach, then it would seem to follow 

 that those of the same habits and of the same or 

 similar habitat would be similar or identical in 

 54 



