Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/158

130 youngsters and put it up. Away it went, full speed, followed by one, two, or three of the huge monsters. No Greyhound fancier ever saw a better bit of coursing as the little chap doubled and turned with the greatest agility, while over and over again the great lumbering Cod overshot their mark, and the little fish went to earth, only, however, to be again routed out and hunted until not one was left."

The theory of mimicry is probably the still imperfect recognition of a great truth which is struggling to survive a mass of more or less irrelevant evidence too frequently offered in its support. It has long been regarded as an unconscious registration of a preservative action of Natural Selection; it is here suggested that it is largely an act of conscious animal volition. Whatever view be held, this alone is certain, that the theory in either its demonstrated or suggestive enunciation has been the means of a vast record of facts pertaining to the life-histories of animals and plants which would otherwise have remained either unobserved or disregarded.