Once more there are the phenomena of mimicry. Perhaps in a more striking
way than any others, these show how traits which seem inexplicable are
explicable as due to the more frequent survival of individuals that have
varied in favorable ways. We are enabled to understand such marvelous
simulations as those of the leaf-insect, those of beetles which
“resemble glittering dew-drops upon the leaves;” those of caterpillars
which, when asleep, stretch themselves out so as to look like twigs. And
we are shown how there have arisen still more astonishing
imitations—those of one insect by another. As Mr. Bates has proved,
there are cases in which a species of butterfly, rendered so unpalatable
to insectivorous birds by its disagreeable taste that they will not
catch it, is simulated in its colors and markings by a species which is
structurally quite different—so simulated that even a practiced
entomologist is liable to be deceived: the explanation being that an
original slight resemblance, leading to occasional mistakes on the part
of birds, was increased generation after generation by the more frequent
escape of the most-like individuals, until the likeness became thus
great.
But now, recognizing in full this process brought into clear view by Mr.
Darwin, and traced out by him with so much care and skill, can we
conclude that, taken alone, it accounts for organic evolution? Has the
natural selection of favourable variations been the sole factor? On
critically examining the evidence, we shall find reason to think that it
by no means explains all that has to be explained. Omitting for the
present any consideration of a factor which may be distinguished as
primordial, it may be contended that the above-named factor alleged by
Dr. Erasmus Darwin and by Lamarck, must be recognized as a co-operator.
Utterly inadequate to explain the major part of the facts as is the
hypothesis of the inheritance of functionally-produced modifications,
yet there is a minor part of the facts, very extensive though less,
which must be ascribed to this cause.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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