468 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
reasons for thinking that symmetrical colour and marking is kept 
up in nature for facility of recognition, a factor essential to 
preservation and to the formation of new species.”* Mr. Bateson 
combats the view that variability of domestic animals is markedly 
in excess of that seen in wild forms. He adduces the great 
variability of the teeth of the large Anthropoids compared with 
the rarity of variations in the teeth of other Old World Monkeys, 
and the comparative rarity of great variations even in man:—‘“ If 
the Seals or Anthropoids had been domesticated animals, it is 
possible that some persons would have seen in their variability a 
consequence of domestication.” | As regards colour, the same 
author is more emphatic. To use his own example :—“1 go into 
the fields of the north of Kent in early August, and sweep the 
Ladybirds off the thistles and nettles of waste places. Hundreds, 
sometimes thousands, may be taken in a few hours. They are 
mostly of two species, the small Coccinella decempunctata or 
variabilis and the larger C. septempunctata. Both are exceedingly 
common, feeding on Aphides on the same plants in the same 
places at the same time. The former—C. decempunctata—shows 
an excessive variation both in colours and in pattern of colours, 
red-brown, yellow-brown, orange, red, yellowish white, and black 
in countless shades, mottled or dotted upon each other in various 
ways. The colours of Pigeons or of cattle are scarcely more 
variable. Yet the colour of the larger C. septempunctata is 
almost absolutely constant, having the same black spots on the 
same red ground. ‘The slightest difference in the size of the 
black spots is all the variation to be seen. (It has not even that 
dark form in which the black spreads over the elytra until only 
two red spots remain, which is to be seen in C. bipunctata.) ‘To 
be asked to believe that the colour of C. septempunctata is con- 
stant because it matters to the species, and that the colour of 
C. decempunctata is variable because it does not matter, is to be 
asked to abrogate reason.” | 
If we consult Mr. Gladstone’s ‘Impregnable Rock of Holy 
Scripture,’ we shall be induced to believe that such markings 
may have arisen by a partial or further process of assimilative 
* § Nature,’ vol. u. p. 197. 
+ ‘Materials for the Study of Variation,’ p. 266. 
{ Ibid. p. 572. 
“ek > . 
