But that it is not the direct influence of cold which colours the hair of a furred animal white we can see from our common hare (Lepus timidus), which, in spite of the winter's cold, does not become white, but retains its brown coat, and not less so from the mountain hare (Lepus variabilis), which in the south of Sweden also remains brown, although the winter there may be exceedingly cold. But as the covering of the ground with snow is not so uninterrupted there as in the higher North, a white coat would be not a better protection than a brown one, but a worse. The white colouring of Arctic animals is therefore not directly due to the influence of the climate, as has often been maintained, but is due to it indirectly, that is, through the operation of natural selection. I have tried to make this clear by means of this example, so that we may not have to repeat it in considering those which are to follow.
But all attempts at any other explanation are even more decidedly excluded when we turn our attention to more complicated cases of colour-adaptation, which are not confined to the simple, general coloration, but are helped by markings and colour-patterns, that is, by schemes of colour.
Thus numerous caterpillars exhibit definite lines and spots on their ground-colouring, which, in one way or another, aid in protecting them from their enemies.
Fig. 2. Longitudinally striped
caterpillar of a Satyrid.
After Rösel.
The green grass-eating caterpillar of many of our Satyridæ has two or more darker or lighter lines running down the sides of its body, which make it much less conspicuous among the grasses on which it feeds than if it were a uniform green mass (Fig. 2). Not infrequently the colour and form present a remarkably close resemblance to the inflorescences or fruit-ears of the grasses. Caterpillars marked thus are never found on the leaves of trees, where they would immediately catch the eye. It is true that longitudinal striping often occurs on caterpillars which live on other plants besides grass, but as these other plants grow among the grasses the protective efficacy is just the same. This is the case with the Pieridæ (Garden Whites).
All the caterpillars of our Sphingidæ, on the other hand, which live on bushes and trees, have on the sides of the segments light oblique stripes, seven in number, which are disposed to the longitudinal axis of the body at the same angle as the lateral veins of a leaf of their food-plant have to the mid-rib. It cannot of course be said that the caterpillar thereby gains the appearance of a leaf, indeed, if one sees it apart from its food-plant it does not look in the least like a leaf, but among the leaves of a bush or tree this marking secures it in a high degree from discovery. Thus the caterpillar of the eyed hawk-moth (Smerinthus ocellatus), when it is sitting among the crowded foliage of a willow, is often very difficult to find, because its large green body does not appear as a single green spot, but is divided by the oblique lateral stripes into sections like the half of a willow leaf, so that even a searching glance is led astray, there being nothing to focus attention on the animal as distinguished from its surroundings (Fig. 3). As a boy I often had the interesting experience of overlooking a caterpillar which was sitting just before me, until after a time I chanced to hit upon the exact spot in the field of vision.
Fig. 3. Full-grown caterpillar of the Eyed
Hawk-moth, Smerinthus ocellatus. sb, the subdorsal
stripe.