Turtle, another in the Dog, another in the Lizard, and so on through nearly all living things. A man would eat freely of what was regarded as the incarnation of the god of another man, but the incarnation of his own god he would consider it death to injure or to eat. And so it is with our own theoretical bantlings; surely they must live whatever else may perish. As Lecky has remarked of earlier days of the Church: "Whenever a saint was canonized it was necessary to prove that he had worked miracles"; it would appear now, that to be famous as a naturalist, one must be at least original in theory.
There seems at present a danger of being too conclusive, as though the study of animal life is only advanced by the promulgation of new views that shall be canonized by a more or less general acceptance; that the observing must be combined with the inventing faculty; that to be behind a theory is to be behind the knowledge of the day. On the other hand, there lurks an opinion, even in powerful and highly qualified quarters, that to suggest a new interpretation of natural phenomena without the most absolute appeal to scientific verification is a deadly sin; that theory is heresy; and that the "romance" of natural history is only expounded by the cautious systematist. Safety seems only possible in the almost forlorn hope of clearing these intellectual Scylla and Charybdis, these opposing schools who both see it all clare et distincte.
If we seek to understand animal colouration, the knowledge will scarcely be acquired from the facts to be derived from the world as we know it. As recently remarked: "But we must remember that such protective resemblances—if in reality they exist—are of very ancient date; and that in the early days of mammalian life on the earth the warm-blooded quadrupeds were an exceedingly feeble folk when compared with contemporary birds and reptiles. It is therefore quite possible that many of the characteristic markings upon creatures living to-day—which are often so difficult to explain—are mere vestiges of a state of affairs which existed in very ancient times, and which demanded special means of protection."[1] If the earliest forms of life are to be sought only in an ancient geological record, it is also in that phase of animal existence that the beginnings of colouration
- ↑ Louis Robinson, ' Wild Traits in Tame Animals,' p. 243.
