The wonderful diversity of colour and of marking that prevails, especially in birds and insects, may be due to the fact that one of the first needs of a new species would be, to keep separate from its nearest allies, and this could be most readily done by some easily seen external mark of difference. A few illustrations will serve to show how this principle acts in nature.
My attention was first called to the subject by a remark of Mr. Darwin's that, though, "the hare on her form is a familiar instance of concealment through colour, yet the principle partly fails in a closely allied species, the rabbit; for when running to its burrow it is made conspicuous to the sportsman, and no doubt to all beasts of prey, by its upturned white tail."[1] But a little consideration of the habits of the animal will show that the white upturned tail is of the greatest value, and is really, as it has been termed by a writer in The Field, a "signal flag of danger." For the rabbit is usually a crepuscular animal, feeding soon after sunset or on moonlight nights. When disturbed or alarmed it makes for its burrow, and the white upturned tails of those in front serve as guides and signals to those more remote from home, to the young and the feeble; and thus each following the one or two before it, all are able with the least possible delay to regain a place of comparative safety. The apparent danger, therefore, becomes a most important means of security.
The same general principle enables us to understand the singular, and often conspicuous, markings on so many gregarious herbivora which are yet, on the whole, protectively coloured. Thus, the American prong-buck has a white patch behind and a black muzzle. The Tartarian antelope, the Ovis poli of High Asia, the Java wild ox, several species of deer, and a large number of antelopes have a similar conspicuous white patch behind, which, in contrast to the dusky body, must enable them to be seen and followed from a distance by their fellows. Where there are many species of nearly the same general size and form inhabiting the same region—as with the antelopes
- ↑ Descent of Man, p. 542.
was the same. This is precisely what we should expect if the symmetry is not the result of a general law of the organisation, but has been, in part at least, produced and preserved for the useful purpose of recognition by the animal's fellows of the same species, and especially by the sexes and the young. See Proc. of the Am. Ass. for Advancement of Science, vol. xxx. p. 246.
