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 
