XI COLOUR AND SONG 3°3 



Pheasants had no ocelli. Slowly, in thousands of 

 generations, they have attained to their present beauty, 

 and the record of the process is written on their 

 feathers. 



To show how similar patterns run through nature, 

 a writer in the Spectator 1 points out that the peacock 

 eye is found not only in the Peacock, the Peacock 

 Butterfly, the Eyed Hawkmoth, and other allied 

 insects, but also in a small fish (Guppy's Cypri- 

 nodon) and in a kind of Iris. The fish in question, 

 recently to be seen at the insect house at the Zoo- 

 logical Gardens, is very minute, hardly more than an 

 inch long, but the males are adorned with several un- 

 mistakable and very beautiful " eyes." Thus we have 

 the same form of decoration in birds, insects, fish, 

 and flowers. 



Perhaps the beauty of birds is not due mainly 

 either to their brilliant colours, or to the patterns in 

 which they are arranged. Some sober-coloured birds 

 are far more beautiful than some of the most gaudy. 

 The lines of the figure have often a grace almost un- 

 equalled in Nature. Take for instances, the Crane's 

 neck, the gentle curve where it joins the body, or the 

 lines of the Gull's expanded wings as he floats in the 

 air. Colour and fine symmetry are, of course, often 

 combined, but the less gaudy birds seem to have the 

 advantage in figure, unless it is that over-brilliancy of 

 colour distracts the attention from other charms. And 

 even in the dullest the eye is always bright. A wild 

 bird must be in a bad way if he has a lacklustre 

 look. 



1 June 3rd, 1893. 



