Abstract
MR. MURPHY'S letter (NATURE, vol. xiv. p. 309) opens up a wide field for speculation. The class of cases to which he directs attention constitutes what I have designated “variable protective colouring,” and in a paper communicated to the Zoological Society (Proc. Zoo. Soc,, 1872), I attempted to show that such cases came to a certain extent within the scope of natural selection. The line of argument pursued is briefly as follows:—Natural selection, working solely for the good of a species takes advantage of all beneficial variations, no matter how they may originate. In but very few cases can the cause of any particular variation be assigned. Natural selection works only on the variations presented to it, the causes of such variations appearing to us, in the absence of observational or experimental evidence, mysterious. If, then, a species deriving advantage from protective colouring under one set of conditions, finds that the conditions vary periodically or irregularly, thus rendering that mode of colouring useless or even disadvantageous, it clearly becomes advantageous to the species to possess a power of adaptation. By this means only can varying external conditions be met, and it is upon this adaptive power that I venture to think the action of natural selection has in these cases been exerted. That the particular cause of such variation cannot be assigned no more weakens the natural selection argument in these cases than in ordinary instances of permanent protective colouring, the possibility of which having been brought about by the “survival of the fittest,” Mr. Murphy seems disposed to admit.
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MELDOLA, R. [Letters to Editor]. Nature 14, 330 (1876). https://doi.org/10.1038/014330b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/014330b0
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