APPENDICES 
411 
Principle of Nature’s had not been mistaken for “ colour - 
protection.” I refer to the general assimilation of creatures 
to their environment — the “Influence of Environment”—a 
principle which does not necessarily involve “ protection ” 
at all. 
Nearly thirty years ago, in Wild Spaing I pointed out 
certain inconsistencies of this theory in relation to specific 
instances. A kindly critic (I think it was Grant Allen) 
chastened youthful presumption as it were questioning a fiat 
of Darwin. Meekly I accepted the rebuke and have not 
“ erred ” since. But all the time I have felt not only that my 
facts were correct beyond dispute, but also that Darwin had 
never stated the reverse, nor sanctioned the mountainous mass 
of poetic nonsense that, since his day, has been ever accum¬ 
ulating on totally inadequate foundations. For that, it is not 
Darwin who is responsible but the speculative writer at second¬ 
hand who, with brilliant pen (but without field-experience), 
expands and embroiders Darwin’s more simple nucleus. Darwin 
drew his inspirations from the field as well as from the study, 
and here is one thing he did say :—“ As the accumulation of 
isolated facts is apt to become uninteresting, so the habit of 
comparison leads to generalisation . . . hence arises, as I have 
found to my cost, a constant tendency to fill up the wide gaps 
of knowledge by inaccurate and superficial hypotheses ” ( Voyage 
of “Beagle,” p. 506). 
None can ever fill those gaps; but my own conclusions— 
based on half a lifetime’s attention to the subject, in many 
climes and under all conditions by day and night—lead me to 
believe that “colour-protection” (though undoubtedly a minor 
component among Nature’s schemes) is yet so limited in scope 
and so constricted in operation, that for the purposes of this 
chapter I propose to deny its existence. That is, to presume 
ad hoc its non-existence; to start with a “clean slate,” and then 
to examine the comparatively trifling number of cases in which 
the principle is operative. 
In order to clear the decks and avoid the manifold pitfalls 
and deceptions in which this question has become enshrouded 
1 Wild Spain , by Abel Chapman and Walter Buck, 1892, pp. 112-15. 
After three decades I cannot alter or improve the passages cited, and^would 
beg readers who possess that book to refer to them. 
