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BY GRANT ALLEN. AUTHOR OF "THE BVOLUTIONIST AT I.ARUK." Prefatory Noik. These little essays have no pretension to be any more than popular expositions of current evolutionary thought, occasionally their author's, oftener still other people's ; but they may perhaps do a little good in spreading more widely a knowledge of those great biological and cosmical doctrines which are now revolutionizing the European mind, and which owe their origin to the epoch,making works of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. G. A. very near the great house itself, where children and visitors have long been wont to pet and caress them. There are, indeed, few more interesting rel- ics of the past in England than these stray lierds of dumb creatures, rem- nants of the native woodland tribes which once spread over the whole FALLOW DEER. TJni>ek the great horse-chestnut trees in Woolney Park the broad circle of shade is now pleasant enough to at- tract the does and fawns of the fallow deer, who lie in pretty groups upon the grass, or stray about, browsing, beneath the heavy boughs thick with scented blossom. To-day I have brought out a few scraps of bread in my pocket, and the fawns are tame enough to come and eat it from my hand on the open; for they have less fear of man here than in any other Slaco I know of, except perhaps in the [agdalen grounds at Oxford. They I will even allow a favorite acquaintance [to stroke and fondletheir pretty heads. |No doubt the long domestication of their ancestors has made them, natu- rally prone to strike up a friend- ^ship with human companions, just as lis the case with kittens and puppies; land at Woolney they have always lived well-timi?ered country, and which now carry us back in mind past the days of Kobin Hood and of William the Red to the old forestine life of the Celtic and Buskarian aborigines. For though some good authorities will have it that the fallow deer date back no earlier in this country than the days of the Romans, who are said to have introduced them for their plea- sure grouiids, I myself can hardly doubt that they are a part of our old indigenous fauna, Avhich now sarviyes only in a few enclosed preserves. The wild white cattle at Chillingham, the red deer on the Scotch moors, and these pretty does aiid fawns in Wool- ney Park, all trace back their aaoestry, r i I S ;5642 \ mm 2 [458] VIQNETTE8 PROM NATURE. I believe, to the time when England was clad by one almost unbroken sheet of oaks and beeches, and still earlier to the time when a gieat belt of J and connected it with the Conti- nent from Holland to Portugal. Even the veriest Red Radical like niywelf may well share John Mill's hope that the 8i)read of agriculture and political economy may never succeed in im- proving these dear dumb friends and pensioners of ours off the face of the earth. They are one of the beautiful links which bind us to the j)ne-liuman past ; and I hope we may hand them on as part of our common heritage to those who will follow us hereafter in a higher and more human future. Evolutionism, it often seems to me, throws a wonderful charm of this half historical sort around every beast or '. bird or plant in the meadows about us. These fallow deer ;ire no longer ' mere accidental animals I^appeningto live in the park here at the present day : they are creatures with a whole past j history of their own, as interesting to | the eye of the evolutionist as a castle | or an earthwork to the eye of an I archaeologist, and as a catheI variations, as Mr. Darwin thinks, or by use and wont, as Mr. Herbert Spencer rather believes (with more probaljility, as it seems to my humble judgment), aided in any case by natu- ral selection, almost all the ruminants grew at last to have horns or antlers of one kind or another. But these weapons of rivalry — for they are all but useless against other species — differ greatly m their structm-e, and therefore in their origin, between race and race. All that is con- stant is the presence of some kind of offensive butting instru- ment upon the forehead. In the bison and ox tribe, including the ante- lopes and goats, the weapons take the form of real horns — that is to say, of hollow permanent dermal processes ; in the deer tribe, they appear as antlers — that is to say, as deciduous bony, not horny, structures ; and in the giraffe they exist in the shape of permanent bosses of the f;kull, covered with hair and skin, but used very fiercely in combav, even in Regent's Park, where one giraffe once actually drove his horn clean into the skull of another. Only one very abnormal ruminant, the musk deer (which is not really a deer at all, but a speciali/.ed aberrant I descendant of the old midift'erentiated ancestral type), has weapons of a dif- ferent character — a pair of curved! tusks in the upper jaw, used in the VIGNETTES FROM NATURE. [454] » same way as those of the wild boar. The historical development of ant- lers in the deer tribe is very marked. While the group was still young and dominant, with the o[)en grass-clad tertiary plains all before it, and with plenty of elbow room to spread and multiply, it had as yet no Aveapons of offense of s ay kind. But as the races grew thicker and more numerous, and as space failed the younger gen- erations— for deer, like men, are sub- ject to the inexorable logic of the Malthusians — the fathers of the herd began to light among themselves for the possession of the does, and only the strongest survived to become the pa- rents of future deerkind. Butting naturally produces hard bosses or protuberances of some sort ; and in the ancestral deer these protuberances took the shape of bony projections on the forehead. Again, those deer which had the most marked and most j)ointed projections would best van (juisb their rivals, and so fare best in the struggle for the, hinds. Their descendants would inherit their pecu- liarities with more or less variation ; and would similarly be selected by the law of battle in accordance with their lighting powers and the fitness of their weapons. Now this probability, set forth a priori by Mr. Darwin, exactly tallies with the geological record, as inter- preted by M. Gaudry and Professor Boyd Dawkins. The very vague and unspecialized deer of the lower mio- cene period had no antlers at all ; they were somewhat like musk-deer without the tusks, or like young fawns in their first summer. But in the mid-niirceni, antlers make their first appeai'ance as mere short pointed knobs ; next, they develop a single side tine ; and in the upper raiocene they come out as fully evolved as in our modern species. Every interme- st )/urst into its wonted hhi/e of hloHsom, them — as hoi)eh)Ssly as the sinvke has so hrigiit that one can hardly wonder lost its lejjfs. However this may l)e, at Linnteus, who fell upon his knees the llowers of the seilge ari' n(»w ar ; and thanked (rod witli fervor when rttnger foMV little branch ' seventy eight kinds of wild Howers in ing spikelets, the top spikelets consist- i hlossoni, not including catkins or ing altogether of yellow stamens, c«»v I grasses. And now to-day, for the ered in groups of three by singh' rus- first time this season. I see tlie pretty set-black scales, while the? lower spike | pink clusters of the red campion adti- lets consist altogether of pistils, with j ing their warmer tint to the blues and two or three white feathery plinnes ' yellows and greens of the tangled hanging out to catch the pollen, and bank beside me. Already the butter- similarly covered by dark sheathing ! flies have found out th t its big bracts. The whole head thus looks i swollen buds have openea and made like a group of miniaturi! catkins, the , clear the way to the nectaries; and I ujiper catkins bright yellow and the can notice a great bustling hairy under ones delicately frosti-d with i bumbU? bee blundering about the HuflFy white. The use of this arrange- ! mouth of one Hower on the stalk, nient is obvious. When the wind I while lialf a dozen little flies are shakes the heads so that they bend and ; gathered around the sticky calyx of jostle against one another, the tallest another. Evidently the red campion sjtikelet on each stalk naturally strikes is very successful in its efforts to against the lower spikeletsof its neigh bors. Thus each plant fert'iizes the next in oron .the other, so j»roducing exactly the Trame result. Indeed, cross-fertiliza- tion is brought about in different plants by a humlicd such devices; and to ob- Herve the various mechanisms by which it is furthered, forms a fresh and al- moBt endless pleasure for every vxmn- try M alk. KED rii. CAMIMON AN!) VVllITK. attract the eyes of insects. I saw it distinctly a hundred yards away, and the butterflies seem to see it ']uite as well, and a great deal more effect ually. The campions, indeed, are flowers in which specialization and adaptation have in many respects )»f*cri carried to an e.\tremely high pitch True, they cannot compare in complexity with the orchids or the dead-nettles, nor even with the little daisies and dande- lions around them. Yet in their own way they have found themselves a ] place in nature which they are well fitted not only to fill but also to adorn. There are two common kinds in England, known to botanists as Thk bank along the footpath that the day and night lychnis respect- leads from the village to Culverhole ively, but to village children as red Cliff's is just at present all aglow with and white campion. The correSjjond- a varied wealth of flowers and insect ■ ence of these two names is full of life. The yell»»w cabbage-butterflies j significance. The day lychnic has a are flitting over the blue masses of ! bright pink blossom, quite scentless, wild hyacinths ; the ladybirds are [ and opening in the morning. It is busy among the wee green aphides specialized for fertilization by bees on the budding sprays of honeysuckle; and buttt^rliies (more particularly the VIGNKTTKS FHOM NATL UK. l4.-isi 7 liittcr), which art' t'(»l(ir-loviiig in.H'ctt*, Hiul which hunt hy si<;lit mainly, aiwayH during the hourn of Hiinlimht. The night lychnin, on thi' othi'i- hun<1, has whitf bloHHoins, opiMiing in thi- evening, anil faintly Hcenti'd with a vugue but pleuHatit perfume. It is specialized for fertilization hy moths, wliieh Hy at night, and which liave sight not adapted to the perception of color. Mr. li. T. Lowne has made some interesting microscopical studies of insects' eyes, and has shown that the eyes of moths correspond to those of owls among birds, in the absence of certain nervous elements supposed to be the organs of the color sense; while the eyes of V)ees and butterflies correspond to those of day birds in the presence of such organs. In fact, it is clear that a color sense would be of little use to nocturnal or crepus- cular animals, because the amount of light in the evening is seldom sutH- cieni/ to show up the distinctive colors of different objects. Heiicd almost all the flowers which appeal specially to the moths are cither white or pale yellow — good re- flectors in the twilight or moonlight — and they are invariably scented, sometimes very strongly. Many of these white and perfumed night blos- soms are great favorites in our gar- dens and conservatories — for example, jasmine, stephanctis, tuberose and night-flowering cereus. Some of them actually close up during the day, and most of them emit their jierfume only m the evening, when the moths on which they dejiend for fertilization are abroad. Moths, indeed, hunt mostly by smell, though they are also partly guided by sight, and perhaps even in part by the faint phosphores ink petals, recalling the old type of the race, just as amongst ourselves apaiticularbone, or tooth, or eyebrow Bometinies still recalls the ancient anthropoid peculi- arities. I Jy somewhat the same pro- cess the extra attraction of scent must have been ac(piired. Even the date flowering has accommodated itself to the new conditions, for the red cara- . jtions are now all coming into blossom and will soon be out in every hedge- row, wliile the white ones do not oi)en for at least another fortnight. 'J here are plenty of butteiHies now in the warm sunsliine at noon; but the nights are still far too chilly for moths to venture out as yet from their com- fortable cocoons. A white lychnis flowering this week would therefore And its life thrown away, with no friendly insect at hand to help it in setting its jtrecious seeds! Thus all those which IjJossomed too early have been slowly weeded out, and only the late-flowering individuals have at last been left to peri)etuate their kind. IV. BUTTERFLY-HUNTING BE- GINS. The Lammas Fields are now posi- tively thick with various butterflies, so I have come out this brilliant afternoon to watch and make notes, as my wont is, on their habits and manners. The first of Ma}"" is to the naturalist what the twelfth of August or the first of September is to the sportsman — it iR the real opening of his year, the date wlien flower-hunting and butterfly- hunting both begin. On tlio 2d^ in spite of backwani weather, the cab- bage butterflies were already airing their riiilphur-yellow pinions in lh<' sun, above the tall lilac sprays of the lady-smocks. Two days later the dragon-flies were darting after midges above the boggy hollows, and the banded hedge-snails were congregat- ing in numbers among the young pale-green foliage of the hawthorn bushes. On the 7th, we had a cloud- ' less blue hori/on and warm sunshine, and I saw an orange-tip plimming its junexpanded wings and displaying itH I beautiful markings on a blade of i grass beside the brooklet. This even- iing, under a nuuikerel sky, like July I weather, I have just been watcliing a motionles~ bunch of dry brown leaves on the hedge bank. Suddenly one of the leaves gets up, fltitters about in the air a bit, and then settles down again on anotlier brown cluster a few yards off. I creep slowly up towards it, and examine the locomotive leaf as it stands. It is a little brown butter- fly, with folded wings, fresh from the chrysalis; and the lower or outer surface, which alone is visible as it sits, seems dappled over with woe light spots, much liiic tlie spots of de- cay upon the leaves among which it hides. I clap my liaiids briskly, and it gets up hastily, opens its wings to the sunshine, and sliows itself oft" at once as a red-streaked beauty in all its glory. It is not dilHcult to see that the difference of color in the two sides of its wings must be de- signed for some special purpose, and that the purpose of the under side U to escape detection, while the purpose of the upper side is to attract atten- tion. The protective use of the brown under wing is very simply explained. The insect must be much exposed to birds and other hostile creatures as it sits still, and bo it requires to resemble the grouud, leaves, or twigs, on which it usually settles, in order to deceive VrONETTES FUOM NATURE (•Iflo) ft the eycH of its enemicm. To 8omc pcoulc it Hot'iiiH that ko Hli^ht a pro- tection UH thiH could Hcarcely bu of any uhc* to the butterfly. Natunil selection, they nay, can hardly work upon Kuch petty diflFerenccH. But to talk HO iH really to hIiow a minappre- liciision of what natural Hclection rij^htly meanw. Kvery butterfly which irtHpotted by a bird, and ho devoured, it) wiped out of existence for over, with all itsnoHsiblo progeny. Blvery butterfly which encapcB, by liowever Hiight a peculiarity, is enabled to lay it8 eggs in peace, and to hand on its pecuharities to its posterity. This Bort of selection is going on every day around us, and no difference is too slight for it to select, no resem- blance is too clumsy jn'ovided it once for a monient aids the insect in avoi and keen indeed. A hawk soaring ho hijjh in the sky that human sight fails to perceive it, will yetdiscriniinute and pounce down upon a lark in the fields below — a small brown bird seated upon a brown clod of earth exactly like itself in coloi*. In just the same way the insectivo- rojis birds keep a sharp look-out for moths and butterflies, upon which they swoop at once whenever they distinguisli them upon the ground be- neath. Every . Among them are some which i know from the pattering tracks jit the mouth or entrance to be the haunts of spiny hedgehogs — the long interval between the prints of fore and hind feet, and the deep toe-nail marks in the damp clay are quite unmistakable ; and as we want a tame hedgehog to keep down the cockroaches in our lower premises, I have turned out to-day, armed with pick and shovel, to un- earth and carry off one of these uncanny bruter, for my kitchen folk. After a little digging in the bank, using my pick carefully for tear of injuring the poor timid beast, I have got to the round warm nest, a mere hollow in the ground roughly floored VIGNETTES FROM NATURE. [464] 13 with leaves and dry moss, and lined on the top with a soft vault of the same materials. And now the crea- ture lies motionless in my shovel, rolled tightly up into a prickly ball, and absolutely unassailable in its sjtherical suit of sharply pointed Bpike-armor. No defensive mail could be more effectual or more deterrent. I cannot even lift him up to put him into my basket; I am obliged literally to shovel him in, and then tie down the flap to keep him safely. There I can SCO him now through the wattles, slowly unrolling himself, and peering about with hi& blinking, beady black eyes, as if to inquire what Arabian Nights' enchantment has so strangely transferred him against his will to this curious locomotive prison. Hedge'nogs are really very common animals in England, and yet few peo- ple have any idea of their existence among half the hedges and banks in the meadows and copses around them. The little animals lie hidden in their subterranean holes or open nests dur- ing the daytime, and only come out in search of slugs, grubs and beetles at nightfall. Yet they are a precious heritage of our age for all that j for they and the few other remaining members of the old insectivorous group form the last survivors of a very early and undeveloped mamma- lian type, the common ancestors of all our other European quadrupeds, who have diverged from them in various specialized directions. They rank as interesting middle links in that great broken but still traceable chain which connects the higher mammals with their lost and unknown serai-reptilian ancestors. Indeed, if we had never heard of the hedge- Iiogs and their allies before, and if one were now to be brought for the first time by some intrepid explorer from Central Africa or the Australian bush, all our biologists would be as delighted with it as they were when the ornithorhynchus and the echidna were discovered and recognized as links between the reptile and the marsupial, or when the supposed ex- tinct fossil genus ceratodus was found alive in the rivers of Queensland, thus connecting the ganoid fishes with the transitional lepidosiren, and through it with the amphibious newts, frogs and salamanders. The uncon- scious black follow used to devour as barramunda, and the colonist used quietly to pickle as salmon, a marvel- ous double-lived creature, provided with perfect gills and perfect lungs, for one specimen of which a natural- ist would have given his right eye ; and so, too, our own gipsies have been in the liabit for ages of baking in a ball of earth the finest surviving representative of the most ancient placental mammalian line. They roll him up (dead, I am glad to say) in a mass of kneaded clay, w hich they put into the fire whole until it begins to crack ; and then they turn out the steaming flesh by breaking the ball, while the skin and the spines stick in a body to the hardened lump of earth. Yet the creature which they so uncer- emoniously devour is actually the eldest scion of the great mammalian stock, whereof all the reigning houses in Europe are, after all, but younger branches. The insectivores, indeed, as Profes- sor Huxley has often pointed out, oc- cupy tlie central position among all placental mammals — that is to say, among all mammals higher than the pouched class of opossums and kan- garoos. Their brain is very small and undeveloped, and their organs gener- ally are but little specialized. All the other common quadrupeds — the carnivores, the rodents, the ungulates — have certain resemblances towards them which they have not towards one another. This shows that the hedgehogs, moles and shrews, our representative English insectivores, display, as it were, an arrest of de- velopment— exhibit to us an early stage of mammalian life which the other European animals have long passed by. Time was when the an- cestors of dogs and deer and sheep and rabbits had risen no higher in the scale of life than these small-brained in m m 14 |4fl5J VIGNETTES FROM NATL RE. and Ktiipid little creatures. But while the other r.-ices have, for ages, out- stripi)etl their hedgehog-like ances- tors, the liedgehogs themselves have remained always at the same low level of develoi»inent and intelligence. Such arrests are not uncommon. In the dim past of geological ages, we know that there must have been at some time a primitive forefather of the whole mammalian stock who had some alhnities to the true reptiles and still more to the frogs. Of this hypo- thetical ])rogenitor of hedgehogs and men we have now no trace ; but of many subsequent stages we have traces in abundance. The ornitho- rhynchus and echidna, which are mam- mals only by courtesy, still preserve for us the intermediate step between this frog like creature and the true quadrupeds. The kangaroos, wom- bats and i)halangers show us a still higher link. The insectivores carry us a step further; and from them on to tlie highest embodiment of all the great types — the cats, the elephants, the buffaloes, the horse and man — the stages are all easy and gradual AVhy, then, do such intermediate links survive? Why have they not all developed alike? When some primitive insectivores grew into nas- cent carnivores and nascent ungulates, why did some still remain at the old low insectivorous stage of hedgehogs and moles? The answer is, because their organization was quite high enough to fit them for the work they had to do in life. They filled a place in the world; and because they tilled it they have lived on, while other types, adapted to higher functions, have outstripped them, and taken the upper seats in the hierarchy of ani- mal life. At the same time, there are some important considerations to be borne in mind in endeavoring to understand the reason for the survival of such lowly-organized groups in the pres- ence of more highly-evohed and bet- ter-endowed races. In the first place, these straggling survivors are gener- ally found in out of-the-way places, far from the fierce competition of great continents or of thickly-popu- l.ated districts. Thus the ornithorhyn- chus and the echidna, the two lowest mammalij or quasi-mammals, live in Australia, long isolated from the Asi- atic mainland, and with no higher animals of any sort than the kanga- roos. The marsupials are similarly confined to the Australian region, with the solitary exception of the opossum. The edentates, another low and early group, including the sloths and armadilloes, belong to South America, for ages a separate island, and only lately invaded by higher types across the newly- raised isthmus of Panama. The lemurs, the lowest of the monkey tribe, are almost con- fined to Madagascar, as are also some other primitive forms. Among the insectivores themselves, the greater number belong to such ])laces as Hai- ti, Mauritius, Java, and the Malay Archipelago generally. Those which live upon the continents, and indeed most of the old types as a whole, are further enabled to drag on their ex- istence somehow by nocturnal, sub- terranean, or water-haunting habits, as well as by living upon small and in- nutritious food. Thus the leinurs, hedgehogs, and aye-ayes feed by night only ; the ornithorhyncus, oar- ed-shrew, and muskrat live in the riv- ers ; th° ' jole passes all his time underground ; and the whole set alike burrow or hide away for the best part of their lives, feeding upon insects, like the ant-eater, or upon reptiles and carrion, like the armadil- lo. Thus, in one way or another, these low forms, by accepting the menial or dishonored places in the comraoii wealth of nature, have been enabled to live on, in stealth and quiet, as well as their more highly- developed ai. 1 intelligent relatives. There is, however, one other con- sideration which it would be impossi- ble to pass by without leaving a very false impression as to these outcasts of animal life. Though they all rep- resent low and little-developed types, they are yet as a rule liighly special- VIGNETTES FKOM NATURE. [4(;(5j iry OX VII. ("ASTLE. ized representatives of those types. | Tlioy have survived because they iiould Jill some vacant ])lace or other : and for that place they have become fully specialized. Thus, though the the lanes cut for rabbit shooting bram, the skeleton, and the other or- among the gorse and bracken, leads gans of an ornithorhynchus or an us at last to the old prehistoric carth- A STKKi' pull up the hillside, through echidna are lowly and poor, as judged by a general mammalian standard, yet their external form is very much more specialized tlian the external f.)rrri of the primi- tive mammal could j)Ossibly have been. He could not have had the broad duck bill, the webbed feet, the burrowing and water-haunting adap- tations of the ornithorhyncus on the one liand, nor the spiny coat and cu- rious digging paws of the echidna on tlic other. So with the insectivores. The hedgehog represents the primi- tive insectivorojis type, plus tlie fa- miliar sharp prickles, which exactly recall those of the echidna : and, in- work or "castle" which crowns the top of Musbury Hill. The glorious view from the breezy summit rewards one well for the trouble of climbing. In the foreground the furze or lieather on the slopes is cpiaintly divided into formal squares of golden blossom by the little parallel avenues, down which innumerable white tails of rabbits dis- appear twinkling into the burroM's at every step we take. Near the foot of the hill, just before reaching the val- ley, an apple orchard stands thick with pinky bloom, a good promise for the cider season ; and the trunks, blown all one way by the wind, are almost hidden from sight by the lux- deed, the tenrec of Mauritius is a uriance rf their lovely burden. IJe- hedgehog in an early stage of evolu-iyond, ag.iin, the broad alluvial level tion, with the spines only half devel- ' stretches away to westward, with the )ped. The mole in like manner rep- 1 Axe meandering in S's through its resents the same primitive insectivo- rous type, plus the peculiar powerful shovel h;in