"Neither party has been quite consistent. Whoever is or can be? Every extreme--every opinion carried to its logical end will prove to be an absurdity. Plants throw out roots and boughs and leaves: this is a kind of locomotion; and as Dr. Erasmus Darwin long since pointed out, they do sometimes approach nearly to what is called travelling; a man of consistent character will never look at a bough, a root, or a tendril, without regarding it as a melancholy and unprincipled compromise. On the other hand, many animals are sessile; and some singularly successful genera, as spiders, are in the main liers-in-wait." This exquisitively written passage the writer was quite unaware of having read, though he possessed and had perused the work quoted, nor can he understand how such an admirable exposition could have escaped notice. Had he read it: had he assimilated it so thoroughly as to be unconscious of its existence; is this a case of rapid growth of automatism? He cannot say. To return to the main point, it would seem that specialization is directly proportionate to activity, and when we compare the infinitely diverse organization of the animal with the comparative simplicity of the vegetable world, this conclusion seems to be inevitable. [Illustration] [9] Pflüger's Archiv. f. d. ges. Phys. Bd. xxix, 1882, quoted by Romanes. Mental Evolution, p. 80, 1883. _Op. cit._ p. 80. [10] Quoted by Romanes, _op. cit._ p. 81. CHAPTER VI. SPOTS AND STRIPES. Bearing in mind the great tendency to repetition and symmetry of marking we have shown to exist, it becomes an interesting question to work out the origin of the peculiar spots, stripes, loops and patches which are so prevalent in nature. The exquisite eye-spots of the argus pheasant, the peacock, and many butterflies and moths have long excited admiration and scientific curiosity, and have been the subject of investigation by Darwin,[11] the Rev. H. H. Higgins,[12] Weismann,[13] and others, Darwin having paid especial attention to the subject. His careful analysis of the ocelli or eye-spots in the Argus pheasant and peacock have led him to conclude that they are peculiar modifications of the bars of colour as shown by his drawings. Our own opinion, founded upon a long series of observations, is that this is not the whole case, but that, in the first place, bars are the result of the coalescence of spots. It is not pretended that a bar of colour is the result of the running together of a series of perfect ocelli like those in the so-called tail of the peacock, but merely that spots of colour are the normal primitive commencement of colouring, and that these spots may be developed on the one hand into ocelli or eye-spots, and on the other into bars or even into great blotches of a uniform tint, covering large surfaces.