Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 57.djvu/61

Rh Natural selection can not have affected the coloration of the cave forms, for it can be absolutely of no consequence whether a cave species is white or black. It could affect the coloration only indirectly in one of two ways: First, as a matter of economy, but since the individual is in part bleached by the direct effect of the



darkness there is no reason why natural selection should come into play at all in reducing the pigment as a matter of economy; second, Romanes has supposed that the color decreases through the selection of correlated structures—a supposition he found scarcely conceivable when the variety of animals showing the bleached condition is considered.