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larvae of the currant moth, showing out conspicuously on its 

 food plant, should be distasteful to birds, etc., and so escape 

 annihilation. On the other hand the larvae of the cinnabar, 

 with a pattern and colour so exactly like the black stem and 

 golden flower of the almost leafless ragwort, should by the same 

 law be an eagerly-sought-after delicacy. But the exact opposite 

 is the real case, as I found out by experience. The currant 

 moth swarms in "The Cedars' " kitchen-garden, and to such an 

 extent that we sometimes gather the larvae, and equally con- 

 spicuous pupae, in baskets for our chickens, who prefer them to 

 almost any other food, and yet such a conspicuous delicacy shows 

 no signs of becoming extinct or of adopting more protective 

 colouring. 



Now the cinnabar also swarms in a field I know, in Norfolk, 

 that contains hardly any flora but bush upon bush of the 

 common ragwort. In this huge field, and under the shade of 

 these gaudy and unsightly plants, my brother-in-law used to rear 

 some hundreds of young pheasants, and often we tried to tempt 

 them to take for a change the larvae of the cinnabar. They 

 would rush at it, but stop dead and not even peck it, so utterly 

 distasteful and even poisonous must these discerning young 

 pheasants know it to be. 



Clearly then in these two examples the colouration can 

 claim no share in the protection of the larvae, and some other 

 force than the "survival of the fittest" must be responsible for 

 the likeness to surroundings. 



Dealing with another section of bird-life, viz., their eggs, 

 we soon find evolution again at fault. It is true very many 

 clutches resemble their surroundings, especially when laid on 

 the ground, such as the terns, grouse, partridge, snipe, redshank, 

 etc., but a theory, like a citadel, is only as strong as its weakest 

 part, and as the majority show no signs of protective colouring, 

 we must fain seek some other principle of colouration than the 

 " survival of the fittest." Let us take a few glaring examples. 

 All white eggs in open nests, as most of the pigeons, some of 

 the owls and hawks, turtle dove, etc. All blue eggs in open 

 nests, as heron, hedge sparrow, bullfinch, most of the thrushes, 

 the blue variety of the guillemot, etc., and that large number 

 (such as finches, etc.) which though somewhat resembling the 

 lights and shades around them, are entirely given away by the 

 background of their own nests. The cuckoo with her incon- 

 siderate habits is a stranger anomaly still. In my small 



