36 



surroundings, or be gradually dying out. There can be no 

 standing still in such a theory as evolution, be the change ever 

 so imperceptible. But there are no signs of evolving a pro- 

 tective colouring, or of gradually dying out, in such birds as 

 the swans, the geese, yellow and grey wagtails, royston, 

 goldfinch, rufus sedge-warbler, waxwing, wood pigeon, jay 

 (shooting a few days ago I saw five come streaming out of one 

 small cover), and a host of others, the females of whom all nest in 

 the open and yet wear the same conspicuous dress as the males. 

 In the second example, while fully admitting that the sitting 

 female in a covered nest does not require protective colouring, 

 I think the most advanced evolutionist would decline to explain, 

 on the principle of his theory, why the two sexes of brightly - 

 coloured birds using either covered or open nests should nearly 

 always resemble one another in plumage. The exceptions I 

 will explain a little later on. 



The same difficulty occurs with young birds. Why should 

 the young males and females be alike in plumage? And why 

 always more or less resemble the mothers, even if she nests in 

 the open and wears such conspicuous plumage as, say, the 

 goldfinch, waxwing, jay, etc. ? For when the mother bird is off 

 the nest these bright coloured little objects must attract attention 

 all round ; yet they show no sign of adopting a protective colour 

 or of becoming extinct. 



Again, the shadowy spots on lion cubs are nearly always 

 attributed to a "throwing back " to some spotted ancestor, and 

 therefore made a strong point of by the evolutionist; as how- 

 ever, the lioness is similarly marked, it may merely be a case 

 of the young resembling their mother in colouring. 



Again, why is it that the sexes in all animal life, whether 

 of conspicuous appearance or not, that are in the habit of 

 congregating together in herds, schools, colonies, flocks, shoals, 

 or swarms, always resemble one another in colour, if they lead 

 a monogamous life ? 



But before answering these questions and giving another 

 explanation of colour, may I be permitted to digress a little, to 

 try and show how, by being sometimes too ready to take things 

 for granted, we may occasionally be led astray. In the life of 

 Charles Darwin his son tells us that after his father's death 

 they discovered that the weights used by the great man were 

 wrong, and consequently many of his deductions misleading. 



