It must not be supposed, however, that Darwin ascribed an unimportant role to Cryptic Resemblances, and as observations accumulated he came to recognise their efficiency in fresh groups of the animal kingdom. Thus he wrote to Wallace, May 5, 1867: "Haeckel has recently well shown that the transparency and absence of colour in the lower oceanic animals, belonging to the most different classes, may be well accounted for on the principle of protection." ("More Letters", II. page 62. See also "Descent of Man", page 261.) Darwin also admitted the justice of Professor E.S. Morse's contention that the shells of molluscs are often adaptively coloured.
("More Letters", II. page 95.) But he looked upon cryptic colouring and also mimicry as more especially Wallace's departments, and sent to him and to Professor Meldola observations and notes bearing upon these subjects.
Thus the following letter given to me by Dr A.R. Wallace and now, by kind permission, published for the first time, accompanied a photograph of the chrysalis of Papilio sarpedon choredon, Feld., suspended from a leaf of its food-plant:
July 9th, Down, Beckenham, Kent.
My Dear Wallace, Dr G. Krefft has sent me the enclosed from Sydney. A nurseryman saw a caterpillar feeding on a plant and covered the whole up, but when he searched for the cocoon (pupa), was long before he could find it, so good was its imitation in colour and form to the leaf to which it was attached.
I hope that the world goes well with you. Do not trouble yourself by acknowledging this.
Ever yours Ch. Darwin.
Another deeply interesting letter of Darwin's bearing upon protective resemblance, has only recently been shown to me by my friend Professor E.B.
Wilson, the great American Cytologist. With his kind consent and that of Mr Francis Darwin, this letter, written four months before Darwin's death on April 19, 1882, is reproduced here (The letter is addressed: "Edmund B.
Wilson, Esq., Assistant in Biology, John Hopkins University, Baltimore Md, U. States.":
December 21, 1881.
Dear Sir, I thank you much for having taken so much trouble in describing fully your interesting and curious case of mimickry.
I am in the habit of looking through many scientific Journals, and though my memory is now not nearly so good as it was, I feel pretty sure that no such case as yours has been described (amongst the nudibranch) molluscs.
You perhaps know the case of a fish allied to Hippocampus, (described some years ago by Dr Gunther in "Proc. Zoolog. Socy.") which clings by its tail to sea-weeds, and is covered with waving filaments so as itself to look like a piece of the same sea-weed. The parallelism between your and Dr Gunther's case makes both of them the more interesting; considering how far a fish and a mollusc stand apart. It would be difficult for anyone to explain such cases by the direct action of the environment.--I am glad that you intend to make further observations on this mollusc, and I hope that you will give a figure and if possible a coloured figure.
With all good wishes from an old brother naturalist, I remain, Dear Sir, Yours faithfully, Charles Darwin.
Professor E.B. Wilson has kindly given the following account of the circumstances under which he had written to Darwin: "The case to which Darwin's letter refers is that of the nudibranch mollusc Scyllaea, which lives on the floating Sargassum and shows a really astonishing resemblance to the plant, having leaf-shaped processes very closely similar to the fronds of the sea-weed both in shape and in colour. The concealment of the animal may be judged from the fact that we found the animal quite by accident on a piece of Sargassum that had been in a glass jar in the laboratory for some time and had been closely examined in the search for hydroids and the like without disclosing the presence upon it of two large specimens of the Scyllaea (the animal, as I recall it, is about two inches long). It was first detected by its movements alone, by someone (I think a casual visitor to the laboratory) who was looking closely at the Sargassum and exclaimed 'Why, the sea-weed is moving its leaves'! We found the example in the summer of 1880 or 1881 at Beaufort, N.C., where the Johns Hopkins laboratory was located for the time being. It must have been seen by many others, before or since.
"I wrote and sent to Darwin a short description of the case at the suggestion of Brooks, with whom I was at the time a student. I was, of course, entirely unknown to Darwin (or to anyone else) and to me the principal interest of Darwin's letter is the evidence that it gives of his extraordinary kindness and friendliness towards an obscure youngster who had of course absolutely no claim upon his time or attention. The little incident made an indelible impression upon my memory and taught me a lesson that was worth learning."VARIABLE PROTECTIVE RESEMBLANCE.
The wonderful power of rapid colour adjustment possessed by the cuttle-fish was observed by Darwin in 1832 at St Jago, Cape de Verd Islands, the first place visited during the voyage of the "Beagle". From Rio he wrote to Henslow, giving the following account of his observations, May 18, 1832:
"I took several specimens of an Octopus which possessed a most marvellous power of changing its colours, equalling any chameleon, and evidently accommodating the changes to the colour of the ground which it passed over.
Yellowish green, dark brown, and red, were the prevailing colours; this fact appears to be new, as far as I can find out." ("Life and Letters", I. pages 235, 236. See also Darwin's "Journal of Researches", 1876, pages 6-8, where a far more detailed account is given together with a reference to "Encycl. of Anat. and Physiol.")Darwin was well aware of the power of individual colour adjustment, now known to be possessed by large numbers of lepidopterous pupae and larvae.
