thinking. This has naturally not escaped the thoughtful consideration of Mr. Wallace, though he seems inclined to ascribe the early uniform colouration to a protective origin,[1] whereas it is difficult to see that the same hue was equally protective to friend and foe, to the devourer and devoured.
A fact, however, which very strongly stands against the view of original assimilative colouration here assumed is found in the markings of the young of all the unicolorous cats,—Lion, Puma, &c,—which are more or less indistinctly spotted or striped, and as many allied species, both young and old, are similarly marked, Darwin has observed that " no believer in evolution will doubt that the progenitor of the Lion and Puma was a striped animal, and that the young have retained vestiges of the stripes, like the kittens of black Cats, which are not in the least striped when grown up. Many species of Deer, which when mature are not spotted, are whilst young covered with white spots, as are likewise some few species in the adult state."[2] If this was a concrete fact, it would be fatal to the suggestion here made, but the evidence is not all one way, for, according to the late Prof. Kitchen Parker, in the Hunting Leopard (Cynœlurus jubatus) the young "are covered with soft brown hair, without spots, quite reversing the usual order of things"[3]; and Col. Pollok states the same thing.[4] However, per contra, Mr. Lydekker observes:
"It is stated that if a cub in this state be clipped, the under fur will exhibit distinct spotting."[5] In the Lion the markings are also fœtal, for Steedman, quoting the particulars of a Lion hunt from the pages of the 'United Service Journal' (August, 1834),
- ↑ "The fundamental or ground colours of animals are, as has been shown in preceding chapters, very largely protective, and it is not improbable that the primitive colours of all animals were so. During the long course of animal development other modes of protection than concealment by harmony of colour arose, and thenceforth the normal development of colour due to the complex chemical and structural changes ever going on in the organism had full play; and the colours thus produced were again and again modified by natural selection for purposes of warning, recognition, mimicry, or special protection" ('Darwinism,' p. 288).
- ↑ 'The Descent of Man,' 2nd edit., p. 464.
- ↑ 'Cassell's Nat. Hist.,' vol. ii. p. 78.
- ↑ 'Zoologist,' 4th ser. vol. ii. p. 163.
- ↑ 'Roy. Nat. Hist.,' vol. i. pp. 443–4.
