No. 515] NOTES AND LITERATURE 



7«)1 



od than many won in already well cultivated conquered 

 . For the many facts brought out on the relation of 

 the sexes during the breeding period; on the care of progeny; 

 on the instincts and habits of the young; on the intelligence, 

 individual and comparative, of the two species studied; and 

 many other topics, the paper itself must be consulted. 



Reighard's investigation being in a field that has long been 

 a storm-center of theoretical biology, will probably attract more 

 readers than any other one in the volumes. In the reviewer's 

 opinion it will, too, exercise a wide and beneficent influence 

 toward rectifying one of the most remarkable aberrations to 

 which scientific speculation has been subject in any domain of 

 science for many a decade. It was the reviewer's privilege a 

 few years ago to spend some time observing the fishes about the 

 coral-reefs of the Hawaiian Islands. From this experience as 

 well as from various others more or less kindred, he is convinced 

 of the essential soundness of Reighard's results. More than 

 that, he is convinced that any naturalist, the windows of whose 

 mind are not darkened with the heaviest screens of adverse 

 dogma, would be likewise convinced were he to examine the 

 evidence for himself. 



We must be content with a single quotation from this paper: 



Coral-reef fishes are not conspicuous because they are in the reefs; 

 they are in the reefs because they are conspicuous and can not therefore 

 leave the reefs, and because, being in the reefs and taking food as they 

 do, there is no reason for their being inconspicuous. The reefs condi- 

 tion their conspicuousness; they are in no sense its cause. 



We should certainly want more light than the author has 

 given on the meaning of the statement that reefs condition but 

 in no sense cause the conspicuousness of the fish. But passing 

 this as of minor importance it is to the first part of the state- 

 ment that we turn for the real meat of the case. If it be really 

 true, and we recognize the truth, that the color of these fishes 

 has arisen we know not how, but that having become thus elab- 

 orate and conspicuous, the fishes find protection as well as food 

 among the corals, then are we at the threshold of the problem 

 of how the color has arisen, with our senses and wits open to re- 

 ceive evidence of whatever sort bearing on the problem, lne 

 unfortunate thing about the natural selection theory has been 

 not so much the error it contains as the fact that it has been 

 made an absolutist theory; one of the sort, that is. that shuts the 



