1880.] The History of Evolutionism. 3 
backs ?” He treats of the arrangements by which plants 
defend themselves from unbidden insedt guests, thus, in part 
at least, anticipating a recent and most interesting work by 
Prof. Kerner. He points out that, in barren moorland dis- 
tridts, horses have learnt howto eat furze a veiy nutritious 
plant — without wounding their mouths. He notices that 
flower-haunting birds and insedts are gaily and vividly 
coloured, whilst larks, partridges, and hares resemble in 
their hues the dry vegetation or the earth upon which they 
rest. He observes that the snake and wild cat and leopard 
are so coloured as to imitate dark leaves and their lighter 
interstices. He pronounces the eggs of birds to be so 
coloured as to resemble adjacent objedts. The eggs ot 
hedge-birds are greenish, with dark spots; those of ciows 
and magpies, which are seen from below through wicker 
nests, are white, with dark spots; and those of larks and 
partridges are russet or brown, like their nests 01 situations. 
He suggests that, “like the fable of the chameleon, all 
animals may possess a tendency to be coloured somewhat 
like the colours they most frequently inspedt, and, finally, 
that colours may thus be given to the egg-shell by the 
imagination of the female parent.” These suppositions as 
Dr Krause reminds his readers, have lately been proved to 
be in many cases, perfeftly corredt. He recognises the 
existence and the universality of the struggle for existence 
— a phenomenon overlooked to this day by a laige portion ot 
the intelligent and respedtable classes, and sometimes 
denied even by compilers of books and writers of review- 
articles. How this contest rages in the apparently peaceful 
vegetable world Erasmus Darwin has well expressed in the 
following lines : — 
“ Yes ! smiling Flora drives her armed car 
Through the thick ranks of vegetable war ; 
Herb, shrub, and tree with strong emotions rise 
For light and air, and battle in the skies ; 
Whose roots diverging with opposing toil 
Contend below for moisture and for sou. 
From such a recognition of the contest waged among all 
organisms it may seem no very wide step to the hypothesis 
of Natural Selection as the cause — according to the younger 
Darwin, or, we should rather submit, as a cause of the 
variation of species. But it was never taken by Etasmus. 
He further expressed the idea which lies at the foundation 
of Mr S Butler’s recent work, “ Life and Habit, and 
which* will doubtless effedt the solution of all the remaining 
mysteries of instinct He regarded the young animal as a 
