194 STUDIES IN THE EVOLUTION OF ANIMALS 



vestiges — left on the skin by plates in some ancestor, in which 

 plating was useful there, such as in Ganoid fishes and other 

 animals, like the Crocodiles, which pass a part of their lives in 

 water. 



Then we cannot say that the dappled Horse, and the Zebra, 

 and the Giraffe, climb up trees, and the one requires its spots, 

 and the other its stripes, to harmonise with its surroundings ; 

 yet they are abundantly spotted, or striped, on their abdominp.! 

 surfaces. , 



The spotting, and of course the striping is a derivation from it, 

 seems to be a survival on parts of the skin where once ancestral 

 plates were. To the evolutionary philosopher they are of great 

 importance, for they indicate a link between skin-plating, and skin- 

 spotting. \ 



It may be interesting to note that the embryo Armadillo 

 ( Tatusia hybridd)} shows plates on its abdominal region also ! 



It would appear that through heredity, not only bones, muscles, 

 etc., are transmitted, but also skin impressions, as if they were 

 eternal photographs of former plating. 



Mr. R. Le Gallienne has written : ^ ' Nature ruthlessly tears up 

 her replicas age after age, but she is slow to destroy the plates. 

 Her lovely forms are all safely housed in her memory, and beauty 

 and goodness sleep securely in her heart, in spite of all the arrows 

 of death.' 



In other words, applied to our subject, this would mean that 

 the forms and colorations of animals, when once established, are 

 slow in becoming altered ; that although the individual is being 

 continually destroyed, the mould that produced it is more per- 

 manent than many think, and that provided the individual has 



^ Professor Parker's Mammalian Descent, p. 94, 

 ^ The Religion of a Literary Man, p. 50. 



