The Making of Species 
day-time, the combination ceases to be effective 
in the dark. He suggests that red and black is 
a self-effacing rather than a warning pattern. 
He further points out that several kinds of harm- 
less snakes have the same colouring and pattern. 
‘There seems,” he says, “to be no reason why 
we should not call these cases of mimicry ; and 
yet this is most likely a wrong interpretation, 
since such harmless snakes are also found in 
districts where the Zaps does not occur, not only 
in Mexico, but likewise in far-distant parts of 
the world, where neither elapines nor any other 
similarly coloured poisonous snakes exist. To 
interpret this as an instance of ‘warning 
colours’ in a perfectly harmless snake, which 
has no chance of mimicry, amounts in such 
cases to nonsense, and we have to look for a 
different explanation upon physiological and 
other grounds.” 
It is, to say the least of it, significant that all 
the opposition to the theory of protective coloura- 
tion comes from those who observe nature first 
hand, while the warmest supporters of the theory 
are cabinet naturalists and museum zoologists. 
In the case of nocturnal creatures, as Dr H. 
Robinson very sagely points out (Knowledge, 
January 1909), the value for protective purposes 
of any given colouration must depend very 
largely on the state of the moon. “It was,” he 
writes, ‘a common experience in the South 
198 
