fence.[1] Grazing cattle will not touch plants that would be deadly or hurtful to them; but if taken to a distant land, to another continent where unknown herbs grow they are unable to distinguish, they sicken or die of the poison they have eaten.[2]
But perhaps it is only by recognizing the full force of the objections that we can hope to fairly realize the strength of the theory thus called in question. If these mimicking or protective disguises have not been incidental to a phase of evolution, they must have been created as they are, and even the advocates of this view—if any competent are left—would surely not enunciate the idea of a purposeless creation, or the fanciful freaks of a Demiurgos, for such must be the case if no purpose is served by these extraordinary imitations. On the other hand, what can the evolutionist reply when he is confronted with the only other postulate of astonished ignorance expressed in the terms of "a freak of nature"?[3]
The solution of the difficulty may—we repeat—probably be found in ceasing altogether to explain some biological features of the past by causes operating in the present, and perhaps only in the present epoch. In fact, many animals affording undoubted instances of protective resemblance and mimicry now show in the observed dangers of their lives, so little raison d'être for these wonderfully evolved assimilations in colour and structure, that it seems more philosophical to conceive them as survivals of a past when there was a greater danger and a larger need.
(To be continued.)
- ↑ John Watson, 'Poachers and Poaching,' p. 270. "A new trap catches more than a better old one until the animals have learned to understand it, and young animals are trapped more easily than old" (Prof. Tyler, 'The Whence and the Whither of Man,' p. 119).
- ↑ Heyn and Stallybrass, 'The Wanderings of Plants and Animals,' p. 402.
- ↑ How different are the theological or teleological views of the Middle Ages to the scientific conception of the struggle for existence as held to-day. We can no longer apostrophize the order Aves in the delightful utterances of the good and saintly Francis of Assisi:—"Brother birds, you ought to praise and love your Creator very much. He has given you feathers for clothing, wings for flying, and all that is needful for you. He has made you the noblest of His creatures; He permits you to live in the pure air; you have neither to sow nor to reap, and yet He takes care of you, watches over you and guides you" ('Life of St. Francis of Assisi,' by Paul Sabatier, Eng Transl., pp. 176–7). Rather now we see
"The grub eats up the pine,
The finch the grub, the hawk the silly finch."
