Animal coloration : an account of the principal facts and theories relating to the colours and markings of animals / by Frank E. Beddard ; with four coloured plates; and woodcuts in the text.

  • Beddard, Frank E. (Frank Evers), 1858-1925.
Date:
1892
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Animal coloration : an account of the principal facts and theories relating to the colours and markings of animals / by Frank E. Beddard ; with four coloured plates; and woodcuts in the text. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    27/312 (page 13)
    Occasionally, a fortunate concurrence of circumstances must have removed the difficulties in the case of wild animals. It is recorded in the “ Proceedings ” of the Zoological Society for 1860 (p. 206), that nine albino moles were captured in a field near Beckenham, in Kent. These may have been, it is suggested, the offspring of one pair ; but more probably this was not the case, since moles usually produce only four or five young ones. Here, be it observed, the white moles were in a position to find a mate, and therefore the colour was handed on to their progeny. In the Zoologist * Mr. Stevenson recorded that a pair of albino night-jars were shot in the year 1856. The night¬ jar is a very invariable bird, and so the fact is of interest, if only as a record of variation. Moreover, white is a particularly unfavourable variation in a crepuscular bird, coloured, as the night-jar is, with hues entirely suitable to the dusky sur¬ roundings of late evening. The isolated occurrence of even a pair is not by itself, perhaps, a very remarkable fact as bearing upon the question at hand ; what is more remarkable and important is the fact that an adult bird, also albino, was shot near the same place in 1858,f and another in 1859; this suggests a case of heredity of a variation most unfavourable to the well-being of the species. In the same Journal i the existence of sixteen or eighteen yellow rabbits in several adjacent warrens is recorded. This is clearly a very large number of individuals of an unfavourable variation. They disappeared, however, after the winter. It would be of great importance to collect statistics of variation occurring in nature ; but it is unnecessary to point out the great difficulties that would attend this line of investi¬ gation. * xiv., p. 5278. f p. 0779. 1 p. (1560.