1 86 ANIMAL LIFE 



whilst the rest of the body is dark green. Taking up 

 their position in the full glare of the sun upon some 

 similarly green bush, they draw up the legs so as to 

 produce the illusion of a flower. There they remain 

 motionless for hours, and may be seen week after 

 week in the same position. As the time arrives at 

 which the natural flowers around them fade, the 

 mantis, too, slowly fades in colour, descends the bush, 

 and, like a discoloured bloom, lies to all appearance 

 helpless and fallen. 



Spiders are not behind insects in their power of 

 sympathetic colouration. Immobility is emphatically 

 characteristic of them, and has played a considerable 

 part in the production and rendering of the cryptic 

 resemblance. 



We may now ask what purpose is served by this 

 widespread sympathy of colouration between the 

 animals of land and sea, and the texture and tinting of 

 their resting-place, or of their associates. The answer 

 that lias become almost an unthinking response — 

 protection — is one that came to Darwin as a flash of 

 light, illuminating the meaning of all those devices 

 which seemed otherwise mere freaks. The great 

 naturalist, handling these unrelated facts of nature, 

 saw in the struggle for existence, the search for food, 

 the evasion of enemies, the maintenance of self and of 

 one's family, a strain that tasked the resources of 

 living things and gave a tragic significance to all 

 their life. Unconsciously and intermittently the best 

 adapted, the more flexibly organised were rewarded 



