258 
HALF HOURS WITH INSECTS. [Packaed. 
icry. The manifold disguises are worn unwittingly by the 
brute, the bird, or insect or mollusk, but there is no less an 
underlying design in nature, and some useful end subserved. 
That everything which exists has some use in the world may 
be regarded as an axiom. The savage knows that himself 
and his offspring will starve unless he by strategem and 
through some disguise can kill his game. Unless the insect 
protects itself from harm by imitating some natural object, 
or other insect which enjoys immunity from the enemies pe¬ 
culiar to the mimic, it and its species will die out. All the 
disguises in nature are, then, for a manifest utilitarian pur¬ 
pose, and we shall see that each species is by some pecu¬ 
liarity in its form, or color, or movements, at one or another 
critical period in its life, protected and preserved in the 
struggle for existence. It often happens that the weaker 
species are overlooked by their enemies, while on the other 
hand the predaceous species are as often enabled to approach 
their prey through the disguise they have assumed. 
But it will be seen that the ultimate fact in this matter of 
'.mimicry is, as insisted on by Messrs. Darwin and Wallace, 
the advantage to the species. It will not unlikely occur to 
the unbiassed reader that the result of this law of mimicry 
is rather the preservation of forms already established , than 
the origin o # f new ones. 
I shall assume as true that quadrupeds, birds, and insects, 
and the lowei\animals as well, are deceived and protected in 
turn by the disguises they assume, and that the end is a 
utilitarian one; while I disagree with the conclusions of 
those who believe that species originate from mimicry, as¬ 
suming that if some species owe their preservation to this 
cause, they may have originated from the same natural 
causes as their unsuccessful fellows whom mimicry, or rather 
the want of it, failed to preserve. The fossiliferous strata 
of our globe are filled with the remains of organisms which 
have perished in unsuccessful attempts to survive in the 
.2 
