The Making of Species 
ment. The hunted creatures are thereby the 
better able to elude the vigilance of their foes, 
while those that hunt are in a position to take 
their quarry by surprise ; so that natural selection 
has caused them all to assimilate to the hues 
of their surroundings. Neo-Darwinians point 
to the fact that some Arctic animals are brown 
in the summer to match the ground from 
which the snow has melted, and turn white in 
winter to assimilate with their snowy background. 
Naturalists further cite, as evidence in favour of 
this theory, the case of those creatures which 
imitate inanimate objects, such as leaves and 
twigs, and thereby escape the observation of 
their foes. 
Thus, the great majority of animals are sup- 
posed to be cryptically coloured, that is to say, 
coloured so as to be, if not quite invisible, 
at least very inconspicuous in their natural 
habitat. 
It is, however, generally admitted that many 
creatures are not cryptically coloured. Some, 
indeed, seem to be coloured in such a way as to 
render them as conspicuous as possible. The 
Neo-Darwinians declare that there is a reason 
for this. “If,” writes Professor Milnes Marshall 
(page 133 of his Lectures on the Darwinian 
Theory), “an animal, belonging to a group liable 
to be eaten by others, is possessed of a nauseous 
taste, or if an animal, such as a wasp, is specially 
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