MATERNAL IMPRESSIONS 
7 
nearly upon the table but the apricots, which, therefore, she 
could not taste. In due time the infant was born with the above 
mark, which certainly showed a striking resemblance to the sup- 
posed source. These stories are commonly laughed to scorn by 
scientists ; yet I notice that, if anyone starts the subject in pro- 
fessional journals, there is immediately a perfect flood of similar 
cases, founded, for the most part, on personal observation by 
sceptical doctors. 
Then, for the ordinary environment, involving no element of 
surprise or shock. I have been told a story of a lady who par- 
ticularly admired a rather handsome Royal Duke. Under certain 
circumstances, she had the portrait of the august personage in all 
her rooms, and constantly thought about him. The offspring 
bore, it is said, a quite remarkable likeness to the object of its 
mother’s Platonic devotion. Whether this tale is authentic or 
not, it is surely extremely probable that the ordinary resemblance 
of child to father does not depend solely upon inherited charac- 
teristics, but is, to a considerable degree, influenced by maternal 
sight and thought. 
Now the question I would suggest for observation is simply 
this. Is the colouration, &c., of birds, of the lower mammals, 
even of fishes, affected by the natural environment of the mother, 
particularly so far as that concerns her visual sense ? And if so, 
to what extent ? 
For example, how far may the colour of a grouse be ascribed 
to the prevailing tints of the heather amid which the bird lives ? 
Are not the stripes of the tiger, lately accounted for so humor- 
ously by Rudyard Kipling, in part due to the vision ever present 
to the maternal eye of tree-trunks, with the sun glinting through 
them ? The white plumage of the ptarmigan and snow bunting, 
the tawny yellow of the lion, the sandy-coloured snakes of the 
Egyptian desert, the sand-grouse, the dead-leaf-coloured wood- 
cock — one need not multiply such instances hitherto ascribed 
to the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence, and to 
that alone. 
When I was a boy I fished in two rivers draining valleys 
about two miles apart. One had a bottom of grey sand, the 
other of stones, large and small, mostly coated with yellowish 
green w r eed. The eels from the former showed a pale w T hite 
ventral surface ; those from the latter a rich yellow, or whitish- 
yellow. 
Recently, in the New Forest, I saw a viper basking in the 
sun at the bottom of a ditch ; and on the day following caught a 
glimpse of another vanishing into a heap of dead leaves. The 
former exhibited the well-known vivid colouration : the latter, 
with the same zig-zag mark on the back, was absolutely indis- 
tinguishable in ground tint from the leaves. I am aware that 
the small red viper is now described as a distinct species ; but 
that hardly affects my point. 
I submit that those readers cf this journal who are not 
