MIMICRY. 315 



fence.* Grazing cattle will not touch plants that would be deadly 

 or hurtful to them ; but if taken to a distant land, to another 

 continent where unknown herbs grow they are unable to distin- 

 guish, they sicken or die of the poison they have eaten. t 



But perhaps it is only by recognizing the full force of the ob- 

 jections that we can hope to fairly realize the strength of the theory 

 thus called in question. If these mimicking or protective disguises 

 have not been incidental to a phase of evolution, they must have 

 been created as they are, and even the advocates of this view — if 

 any competent are left — would surely not enunciate the idea of a 

 purposeless creation, or the fanciful freaks of a Demiurgos, for such 

 must be the case if no purpose is served by these extraordinary 

 imitations. On the other hand, what can the evolutionist reply 

 when he is confronted with the only other postulate of astonished 

 ignorance expressed in the terms of " a freak of nature"?! 



The solution of the difficulty may — we repeat — probably be 

 found in ceasing altogether to explain some biological features of 

 the past by causes operating in the present, and perhaps only in 

 the present epoch. In fact, many animals affording undoubted 

 instances of protective resemblance and mimicry now show in the 

 observed dangers of their lives, so little raison d'etre for these 

 wonderfully evolved assimilations in colour and structure, that it 

 seems more philosophical to conceive them as survivals of a past 

 when there was a greater danger and a larger need. 



* John Watson, 'Poachers and Poaching,' p. 270. "A new trap catches 

 more than a better old one until the animals have learned to understand it, 

 and young animals are trapped more easily than old" (Prof. Tyler, 'The 

 Whence and the Whither of Man,' p. 119). 



f Heyn and Stallybrass, ' The Wanderings of Plants and Animals,' p. 402. 



{ How different are the theological or teleological views of the Middle 

 Ages to the scientific conception of the struggle for existence as held to-day. 

 We can no longer apostrophize the order Aves in the delightful utterances of 

 the good and saintly Francis of Assisi : — "Brother birds, you ought to praise 

 and love your Creator very much. He has given you feathers for clothing, 

 wings for flying, and all that is needful for you. He has made you the 

 noblest of His creatures ; He permits you to live in the pure air ; you have 

 neither to sow nor to reap, and yet He takes care of you, watches over you 

 and guides you " (' Life of St. Francis of Assisi,' by Paul Sabatier, Eng 

 Transl., pp. 176-7). Rather now we see 



" The grub eats up the pine, 

 The finch the grub, the hawk the silly finch." 



(To be continued.) 



