SAIVA-SIDDHANTA

"
3*8 THE NATURE OF THE J1VA.
persons ever associated with pigs, get piggy faces, and with
horses, horsey faces. In the case of a husband and a wile
when they have been perfectly loving,
it has been found to
effect a complete assimilation of their features. They might
have started life with perfectly distinct facial features, yet their
souls become one through love, and through the power of the
soul, their bodies are also become one. The writer of the
book Spiritual law in the natural world (Purdy Publishing
Company, Chicago.) observes all who have made a study of
the cause of all things have become so at one with it as to
have causing power, for it is an invariable rule that we
become like what we study or are closely associated with.
We become so-like people with whom we live constantly that
chameleon. It does not change colour from fright. When left in con
finement, it rarely changes colour. But as it runs about, it changes ^colour
according to the colour of the surface over which it runs. As it runs
over the bare soil, if the colour of the soil be red, it will become red ; if
black it will become black. As it runs over the brown trunk of a tree, it
changes into brown ;
and when it reaches the green leafage, it changes
into green. In the case of birds, their colour is determined from the
colour of the soil &c., wherein they build their nests.
selves from birds of prey. In the case of lions, their grey
It is to protect them
colour is due to
their habitat, In the African wilds, where there is little or no vegetation,
these lions generally find their lair amidst small pieces of gray rocks, and
while they stand beside these pieces of rock, the hunter could hardly
distinguish them from the pieces of rock. Artists in their pictures even
produce this effect. With regard to tigers which usually haunt thick
forest glades,
their black and yellow stripes are the. result of their environ
ment. These stripes imitate the alternate light and shade which falls
slantingly through the leafage and the animal becomes indistinguishable
thereby. If one observes closely the leaves of the orange tree, he would
find things there which imitate closely the excreta of birds, black with a
white tip.
These are really live caterpillars which seek their mimicry to
escape even the keen eyes of the birds that feed on them. There a.e
flowers especially those of orchids which resemble butterflies (I
have seen
in the conservatories at Ooty and Peradeniya gardens orchid lowers
resembling butterflies) and doves and pigeons. (See for a treatment of the
protective resemblances or mimicry in insects, Chapters VI & VII in
Romance of
the Insect world by L. M. Badenoch).