Abstract
THE conception which forms the foundation of this interesting volume a conception which, as the author maintains, “contradicts Sexual Selection and modifies the theory of Natural Selection”—assumes that the two antagonistic principles of fear and anger, finding their expression in concealing and brilliant appearances, respectively, are inherent in animal life itself and that their interplay is the determining cause of evolution. This theory encounters at the outset a difficulty like that urged against Wallace's interpretation of the bright colours and striking features displayed in courtship as caused by energy and super-abundant vitality. For why should anger any more than vitality find its expression in colours, some of which are due to the selective absorption of light by pigments, while others are due to inter-ference of light by plates of a certain mathematically exact thickness—Is it a probable theory which would attribute to a single fundamental cause the precise chemical constitution of the pigments and the precise thickness of the plates—In support of this theory, the author has brought together and described most attractively a great variety of examples illustrated by numerous simple but very effective figures prepared from his own drawings.
The Meaning of Animal Colour and Adornment: being a New Explanation of the Colours, Adornments and Courtships of Animals, their Songs, Moults, Extravagant Weapons, the Differences between their Sexes, the Manner of Formation of their Geographical Varieties and other Allied Problems.
Major R. W. G. Hingston. Pp. 411. (London: Edward Arnold and Co., 1933.) 18s. net.
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P., E. The Meaning of Animal Colour and Adornment: being a New Explanation of the Colours, Adornments and Courtships of Animals, their Songs, Moults, Extravagant Weapons, the Differences between their Sexes, the Manner of Formation of their Geographical Varieties and other Allied Problems . Nature 132, 459–461 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/132459a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/132459a0
