35 



PROTECTIVE COLOURING, 



BY 



JOSEPH F. GREEN. 



Read at the Meeting of the Society, 27th Jan., 1904. 



PROTECTIVE COLOURING " appears to me to be 

 a common platform on which to argue the pros and 

 cons of evolution, both because we can actually see 

 the principle at work for ourselves, and also because 

 it admits of all those, who, like myself, hold, that life and 

 its surroundings, as at present constituted, date back from 

 the third verse of the first of Genesis. My object therefore in 

 this Paper is to try and show that animal colouration is 

 inherent, and not evolved from the "survival of the fittest," 

 and I hope my idea may be considered worthy of criticism. 

 I come here to learn and not to teach, and look forward to a 

 discussion that may clear the ground of erroneous conclusions. 

 With this preamble I will, with your permission, proceed. 



We have all of us noticed how frequently a bird that sits 

 in an open nest differs in colour from her mate, and more or 

 less resembles her surroundings, as for instance the females of 

 the pheasants, the ducks, the blackbird, and others. 



Many of us, too, have noticed that if a bird sits in a covered 

 nest she very nearly always resembles in colouring the male,, 

 such for instance as the sheldrakes, tits, woodpeckers, magpie, 

 bee-eater, chough, hoopoe, nuthatch, kingfisher, puffin, etc., 

 amongst the conspicuously coloured birds, and the wren, tree- 

 creeper, jackdaw, wryneck, starling, stock dove, and others, with 

 more or less of a dowdy dress. 



Now both these cases are generally attributed to evolution. 

 The first, a result of the " survival of the fittest," from protective 

 colouration ; the second, as showing that in a covered nest pro- 

 tective colouring is not required. But before taking this for 

 granted I must mention two objections. Surely all birds who 

 sit in exposed nests should be getting more and more like their 



