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to argue against that idea ; and now it seems to me that 
I can find no better illustration of the direct and definite 
action of transforming influence, pure and simple. 
One striking case of the adaptation of the colour of 
animals to their surroundings is to be found in the fact 
that insects resting on the green leaves of the spring and 
summer change with the changing leaves of autumn. 
“ When the first larvae on the elm are seen, 
The crawling insects, like the leaves, are green ; 
Ere chill October shakes the latest down, 
They, like the foliage, change their tints to brown.” 
—(O. W. Holmes.) 
Now, I presume that if this were due to Natural Selection, 
the process of change would be somewhat in this wise. 
Some individuals would be born with a certain tendency 
slightly to change from green to brown, as the summer 
was passing away ; that these would be less conspicuous 
than those which remained green, and that in conse 
quence of this they would survive, while their unchanged 
comrades would be destroyed. But there is another 
explanation which can be established by observation and 
experiment, which dispenses with the need, and excludes 
the possibility, of Natural Selection. 
“ Green chlorophyll remains unchanged in the tissues of leaf-eating 
insects, and, being discernible through the transparent integument, 
produces the same colour as that of the food plant.”—(Wallace. 
Tropical Nature, p. 170.) 
“ The green colour of the blood of most larvae is adventitious in 
origin, having been derived from the chlorophyll of the leaves ; it is, 
however, much modified in constitution by the time it reaches the 
blood. The green colouring matter passes from the blood into the 
cells of the surface of the body in many caterpillars, but is re 
dissolved in the blood of the chrysalis. It is then made use of, 
in certain species, to tinge the eggs ; and after this, is absorbed 
into the body of the young larvae, which afterwards hatch from them, 
protecting them with a green colour, before they have had time to