CH. XVI] THE INTERPRETATION OF COLOUR 959 



in gallant black and gold, are terrible as an army with banners; 

 and the Gila Monster (the poison-lizard of the Arizona desert) is 

 splashed with scarlet — its dread and black complexion stained with 

 heraldry more dismal. But the wasp-Hke livery of the noisy, idle 

 hover-flies and drone-flies is but stage armour, and in their tinsel 

 suits the little counterfeit cowardly knaves mimic the fighting crew. 



The jewelled splendour of the peacock and the humming-bird, 

 and the less effulgent glory of the lyre-bird and the Argus pheasant, 

 are ascribed to the unquestioned prevalence of vanity in the one sex 

 and wantonness in the other*. 



The zebra is striped that it may graze unnoticed on the plain, the 

 tiger that it may lurk undiscovered in the jungle; the banded 

 Chaetodont and Pomacentrid fishes are further bedizened to the 

 hues of the coral-reefs in which they dwell f- The tawny lion is 

 yellow as the desert sand; but the leopard wears its dappled hide 

 to blend, as it crouches on the branch, with the sun-flecks peeping 

 through the leaves. 



The ptarmigan and the snowy owl, the arctic fox and the polar 

 bear, are white among the snows; but go he north or go he south, 

 the raven (Uke the jackdaw) is boldly and impudently black. 



The rabbit has his white scut, and sundry antelopes their piebald 

 flanks, that one timorous fugitive may hie after another, spying the 

 warning signal. The primeval terrier or colHe-dog had brown spots 

 over his eyes that he might seem awake when he was sleeping J : 

 so that an enemy might let the sleeping dog lie, for the singular 

 reason that he imagined him to be awake. And a flock of flamingos, 



* Delight in beauty is one of the pleasures of the imagination; there is no 

 limit to its indulgence, and no end to the results which we may ascribe to its 

 exercise. But as for the particular "standard of beauty" which the oird (for 

 instance) admires and selects (as Darwin says in the Origin, p. 70, edit. 1884), 

 we are very much in the dark, and we run the risk of arguing in a circle ; for wellnigh 

 all we can safely say is what Addison says (in the 412th Spectator) — that each different 

 species "is most aflFected with the beauties of its own kind, . . ,Hinc merula in nigro 

 86 oblectat nigra marito; . . .hinc noctua tetram Canitiem alarum et glaucos miratur 

 ocellos." 



t Cf. T. W. Bridge, Cambridge Natural History (Fishes), vn, p. 173, 1904; also 

 K. V. Frisch, Ueber farbige Anpassung bei Fische, Zool. Jahrh. {Abt. Allg. ZooL), 

 xxxn, pp. 171-230, 1914. But Reighard, in what Raymond Pearl calls "one of 

 the most beautiful experimental studies of natural selection which has ever been 

 made," found no relation between the colours of coral-reef fishes and their elimination 

 by natural enemies {Carnegie Inst. Publication 103, pp. 257-325, 1908). 



} Nature, L, p. 672; u, pp. 33, 57, 533, 1894-95. 



