MIMICRY. 359 



parts ; that no hiatus existed among natural bodies, or, in other 

 words, that no individual stood completely apart from surrounding 

 groups, but that all were connected by a uniform gradation of 

 intermediate forms and characters, is a law of natural history 

 which every day's experience tends more strongly to confirm." * 

 We sometimes find teleological views in what are presumably put 

 forward as evolutionary suggestions. Thus Mr. Harting, in 

 discussing the migrations of Ceylonese butterflies, is inclined 

 to concur with Col. Swinhoe, in considering the explanation 

 " as a sudden exodus from the birthplace, leading to a com- 

 pensating reduction of the species, after a season exceptionally 

 favourable to its increase." f This " compensating reduction," 

 or rather the method of the same, as thus expressed, seems more 

 logically to denote design or chance, neither of which will explain 

 the phenomena, but may reasonably be adduced to account for 

 the theory. Perhaps one of the most orthodox and thorough- 

 going teleologists was the late Frank Buckland, to whom the 

 poisonous fangs of deadly Snakes were " the apparatus which the 

 omniscient Creator has given to the class of Snakes to enable 

 them to procure their food " ; though, he might have added, these 

 divinely-constructed creatures are on that very account gladly 

 destroyed by the orthodox and heretical alike. The real differ- 

 ence between the teleologist and the evolutionist appears to be 

 this. Both search for the phenomenal facts in animal life, but, 

 when found, the teleologist goes no further than enunciating the 

 magical word " Design." The evolutionist, on the contrary, 

 seeks to find how the structure or property has been, and from 

 whence, derived. With the first it is " Fall down and worship "; 

 with the second, " Prove all things." Agassiz considered that 

 the only classification of the animal kingdom was to be found in 

 the plan of creation ; " the free conception of the Almighty 

 Intellect matured in His thought before it was manifested in 

 tangible external forms." { And again: "I would as soon cease 

 to believe in the existence of one God because men worship Him 

 in so many different ways, or because they even worship gods of 



" :: Cf. Steedman, ' Wanderings and Adventures in the Interior of 

 Southern Africa,' vol. ii. p. 97. 



j 'Zoologist,' 3rd ser. vol. xix. pp. 340-1. 

 I 'An Essay on Classification,' p. 10.' 



