The Making of Species 
usual—and have bushy tails, which they carry 
erect, Although less powerful and ferocious 
than other members of the weasel family, to 
which they belong, skunks are notoriously pro- 
tected by their abundant secretion of a very fetid 
liquid. 
For further examples of warning colouration 
we would refer the reader to Beddard’s illumin- 
ating book, entitled Axzmal Colouration. 
It should be noticed that in all the cases which 
we have cited the colouration is not only con- 
spicuous, but is found in both sexes, whereas in 
many undefended animals the male may be just 
as strikingly coloured, but the female is not. 
We may take it as proved that there is a very 
general relation between gaudy colouring and 
inedibility, or rather unpalatability, among insects. 
It may safely be said that any species of insect 
which lives, either as an adult or as a larva, in the 
open will perish in the struggle for existence if, 
being conspicuously coloured, it is neither in- 
edible nor armed with a weapon such as sting, nor 
provided with a thick cuticle, nor resembles in 
appearance some creature which is protected. 
But from this it is not legitimate to conclude, 
as Neo-Darwinians do, that these brilliant colours 
have been slowly brought into being by natural 
selection. 
Why should any creature, having by the 
“luck” of variation and heredity acquired some 
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