Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/154

126 overvalue the efficacy of all these attempted concealments. They are not all successful,—nothing is, absolutely,—but are still means to an end. We are too apt to consider a disguise perfect because we have only accidentally discovered it, while at the same time our existence does not depend upon the result of the search. An amateur or an arm-chair naturalist is speechless with wonder at the least exhibition of wood-craft, a common attribute of many agricultural labourers and gypsies. Jefferies has accurately diagnosed the sense perceptions of a young gamekeeper:—"He will decide at once, as if by a kind of instinct, where any particular bird or animal will be found at that hour." And in a similar manner, but in a greater degree, will be formed the destructive experience of the bird or mammal whose life depends upon the discovery of its prey. Mimicry makes the successful search more difficult, the accidental escape more frequent, and actual extermination by such means alone, impossible. The enemy in his close pursuit finds other prey to satisfy his hunger, like the gold prospector who in his quest may come across non-auriferous minerals which tend to assuage his financial longings; and so an average of destruction is reached, and none alone are compelled to be "confessors" to nature's inexorable rule.

It is probable that highly protected or mimicking species are only destroyed by their most acutely sense-organized enemies, and have a general immunity from the attacks of the ordinary animal pirates. We have no more reason to predicate a dead level in the intelligence of a single species or genus of animals than we have to believe that the same character exists in Homo sapiens himself. For in nature, pace Ecclesiastes, the race is to the swift, and the battle is to the strong, though the exceptions of "time and chance" may prove the rule. Stroll along a trout stream when anglers are at work, and notice how empty baskets reward the majority, or those who perceive not. Now observe the skilled killer of Trout, how he will detect a hidden fish under the opposite bank, and soon possess the same. Know-