462 THE ZO0LOGIST. 
thinking. This has naturally not escaped the thoughtful con- 
sideration of Mr. Wallace, though he seems inclined to ascribe 
the early uniform colouration to a protective origin, * whereas 
it is difficult to see that the same hue was equally protective to 
friend and foe, to the devourer and devoured. 
A fact, however, which very strongly stands against the view 
of original assimilative colouration here assumed is found in the 
markings of the young of all the unicolorous cats,—Lion, Puma, 
&c.,—which are more or less indistinctly spotted or striped, and 
as many allied species, both young and old, are similarly marked, 
Darwin has observed that ‘‘no believer in evolution will doubt 
that the progenitor of the Lion and Puma was a striped animal, 
and that the young have retained vestiges of the stripes, like the 
kittens of black Cats, which are not in the least striped when 
grown up. Many species of Deer, which when mature are not 
spotted, are whilst young covered with white spots, as are like- 
wise some few species in the adult state.” + If this was a concrete 
fact, it would be fatal to the suggestion here made, but the 
evidence is not all one way, for, according to the late Prof. 
Kitchen Parker, in the Hunting Leopard (Cynelurus jubatus) the 
young ‘‘are covered with soft brown hair, without spots, quite 
reversing the usual order of things’’{; and Col. Pollok states 
the same thing.§ However, per contra, Mr. Lydekker observes: 
‘It is stated that if a cub in this state be clipped, the under fur 
will exhibit distinct spotting.”’|| In the Lion the markings are 
also foetal, for Steedman, quoting the particulars of a Lion hunt 
from the pages of the ‘ United Service Journal’ (August, 1834), 
* The fundamental or ground colours of animals are, as has been 
shown in preceding chapters, very largely protective, and it is not im- 
probable that the primitive colours of all animals were so. During the long 
course of animal development other modes of protection than concealment 
by harmony of colour arose, and thenceforth the normal development of 
colour due to the complex chemical and structural changes ever going on in 
the organism had full play; and the colours thus produced were again and 
again modified by natural selection for purposes of warning, recognition, 
mimicry, or special protection” (‘ Darwinism,’ p. 288). 
+ ‘The Descent of Man,’ 2nd edit., p. 464. 
{ ‘Cassell’s Nat. Hist.,’ vol. ii. p. 78. 
§ ‘ Zoologist,’ 4th ser. vol. ii. p. 163. 
|| ‘Roy. Nat. Hist.,’ vol, i. pp. 443-4. 
