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nydus/Contributions to the Theory of Natural SelectionPublic
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III. MIMICRY, AND OTHER PROTECTIVE RESEMBLANCES AMONG ANIMALS.

for the development of colour in the animal world, and shall be better enabled to understand how, by their combined and separate action, the immense variety we now behold has been produced. Both causes, however, will come under the general law of “Utility,” the advocacy of which, in its broadest sense, we owe almost entirely to Mr. Darwin. A more accurate knowledge of the varied phenomena connected with this subject may not improbably give us some information both as to the senses and the mental faculties of the lower animals. For it is evident that if colours which please us also attract them, and if the various disguises which have been here enumerated are equally deceptive to them as to ourselves, then both their powers of vision and their faculties of perception and emotion, must be essentially of the same nature as our own—a fact of high philosophical importance in the study of our own nature and our true relations to the lower animals.

Conclusion.

Although such a variety of interesting facts have been already accumulated, the subject we have been discussing is one of which comparatively little is really known. The natural history of the tropics has never yet been studied on the spot with a full appreciation

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