436 The Laws of Emphasis and Symmetry . [July, 
to make a species inconspicuous elaborated, and how are 
they despatched to the parts where we find them ?. 
Certain interesting and novel ideas on these subjects have 
been recently brought forward by Mr. A. Tylor, in a Paper 
read before the Anthropological Society.* He considers 
that the forms and decorations of organised beings seem to 
be regulated by laws which he calls those of Emphasis and 
of Symmetry. . . 
Symmetry, of course, calls for no explanation, as it is 
generally known that the two lateral halves of vertebrate 
and articulate animals are substantially alike, both in form 
and colouration, exceptions in the latter respeCt being 
scarcely more common than in the former, save among 
certain domestic mammals, such as horses, cows, dogs, 
and cats, which, when not concolorous, frequently show 
a different design on the left and the right side of the 
body. 
Emphasis, Mr. Tylor defines as the marking out by form 
or decoration of the important parts or organs. He consi- 
ders that the emphasised functional decorations group 
themselves into two classes, and that these classes coincide 
in their occurrence with the two great divisions of the 
Vertebrata and the Invertebrata. In the former class the 
emphasised ornamentation is axial, being the outward ex- 
pression of the vertebral column with its appendages. In 
the Invertebrata the decoration tends to follow the outline 
of the animal, and so developes borders. 
These generalisations deserve a careful examination. In 
the Invertebrata, or at least in the Articulata, borders 
marking the outline of the body, or of some particular part, 
or running parallel with such outline, are of very frequent 
occurrence. The margins of the wings of butterflies are 
very often coloured differently from the disk of the wing, 
and there are often repetitions of the outline in the form of 
bands and lines of spots as we proceed inwards. Such pat- 
terns occur to a great extent in genera and families by no 
means closely connected, and have often excited the atten- 
tion and the comments of naturalists. 
In considering these designs, which seem, so to speak, 
based upon the outline of the wings, the idea at once sug- 
gests itself that they may be — in part at least — explained by 
the well-known phenomena of capillarity and of the varying 
* “On a New Method of expressing the Law of Specific Changes and 
Typical Differences of Species and Genera in the Organic World, and espe- 
cially the Cause of the Particular Form of Man.” 
