44 



after being with the females for months, adopt the female 

 plumage, but with all British swans and geese the sexual 

 colouring is the same. The chaffinch, another exception, is so 

 little with his spouse as to earn its scientific name of ccelebs, (a 

 bachelor), which will, I think, account for a slight difference in 

 several of the finches, while the young of all species would 

 more or less resemble the ever-present mother. 



The orioles at first glance would seem to upset the theory, 

 as the male is exceptionally brilliant, but then his plumage 

 resembles the sober dress of his wife until his third year, and so 

 her costume may by that time have become a fixture. 



In entomology the brilliant colouring of the male would 

 also seem to be transferred to the female, as red admirals, 

 peacocks, coppers, swallow tails, etc. The blues (that puzzling 

 colour) are an exception, but all the blues have brilliantly- 

 coloured undersides, and alike in both sexes, which they love to 

 show when at rest, so the likeness might be transferred from 

 there. So with the purple emperor and many others. The 

 brilliant pattern of the poisonous larvae would be derived from 

 the food-plant whether the protective colouring be needed or not, 

 and thus explain many apparent anomalies in insect life. 



If protective colouring was derived by evolution we ought, 

 in every species, to get a series with a perfect gradation of 

 colour, showing how the more perfect had supplanted the im- 

 perfect, but such is not the case. As Sir Herbert Maxwell so 

 w r ell puts it, there is no apprentice hand in nature. Apiarian 

 science tells us that on the sarcophagi, on Egyptian stones, and 

 and on papyri, there are drawings of the combs of bees identical 

 in every particular with the present. So with that marvel of 

 architecture the spider's web. Traced back, as it can be, for 

 thousands of years, no semblance of any alteration is visible, 

 and so it would seem to be with every living organism, for surely 

 the fossils and extinct forms we come so continually across are 

 but the remains of an earlier and altogether distinct form of life, 

 that ceased or was destroyed we know not how, except that "the 

 earth was (or had become) without form and void " after which 

 Adam and Eve are expressly told to replenish the earth. All 

 was orignally created perfect for its work, and thus colour-sensi- 

 tiveness would be more or less inherent in every creature, and 

 although often fulfilling the duty of protective colouration, is 



