Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 75.djvu/576

570 of weakness. Also, being falsely based, they have needed props and dikes at one point after another, and these have naturally proved to be out of harmony with each other. Here it has been assumed that animals need badges for mutual recognition, and there, as in the "mimetic" groups, a theory has obtained which assumed that they need nothing of the kind. Individuals of each species of these groups have been expected to know each other amidst a crowd of close imitations (and doubtless they could do so).

The much insisted upon significance of the superficiality of the resemblances among the "mimetic" groups vanishes upon our discovery of a full blown use, of the most direct and primitive character, for all these colorations. From that moment, these resemblant costumes are seen to be, as I have pointed out, on one basis with the many other resemblances among species of widely different origin that have long enough had the same habits and environment. All these, and they are to be found in many orders of the animal kingdom, are only superficial resemblances, yet it is perfectly plain that they have been acquired for a use. The proof that they are only superficial is that the anatomist can discover the real pedigree of the disguised species by an examination of the elements of its structure. Good examples of this fact are the whales and seals, with their hind legs more or less arranged into a fishtail, yet perfectly recognizable by the zoologist. (I assume the truth of natural selection.)

In fine to imagine that the forest population, living side by side, in perpetual need of knowing each other, would be in any way helped by badges, is as if some person, newly arrived in a long-established community, supposed, because he could only distinguish its members by prominent superficial marks, the red hair of one, the pock marks of another, etc., that this was how the members themselves knew each other, after lifelong familiarity.

The truth, however, is, that were he to cite these distinguishing marks, in speaking of one member to another, he would find that the mutual familiarity of these members had become so subtile, had, so to speak, sunk in so deep, that they had almost forgotten the existence of such marks at all, except where men's names commemorated these.

Lifelong members of a community, all reacting upon each other in a hundred ways, know each other by innumerable means, all communicating with their subliminal consciousness. To this consciousness, the movements, for instance, of a mink in the bushes, probably announce his identity to all his neighbors, who hear him, just as plainly as if they saw him, and the least glimpse of him would, upon the same principle, be as good as a full view. Habitual woodsmen generally tend to believe this, because of finding that they themselves tend to this intuitive method of identifying their wild neighbors in the forest.