XVI] THE INTERPRETATION OF COLOUR 671 



Some dangerous and malignant animals are said (in sober 

 earnest) to wear a perpetual war-paint, in order to "remind their 

 enemies that they had better leave them alone*." The wasp and 

 the hornet, in gallant black and gold, are terrible as an army 

 with banners ; and the Gila Monster (the poison-hzard of the 

 Arizona desert) is splashed with scarlet- — its dread and black 

 complexion stained With heraldry more dismal. But the wasp- 

 like hvery 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 t. The tawny hon 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 (hke 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 collie-dog 



* Dendy, Evolutionary Biology, p. 336, 1912. 



I Delight in beauty is one of the pleasui'es 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 bird (for 

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

 «'e 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 4 12th Spectator) — that each different 

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

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

 ocellos." 



% Cf. Bridge, T. W., Cambridge Natural History (Fishes), vii, p. 173, 1904; 

 also Frisch, K. v., Ueber farbige Anpassung bei Fische, Zool. Jahrb. (Abt. Allg. Zool.), 

 xxxii, pp. 171-230, 1914. 



