136 BIRDS AND MAN 



flesh-tints are attractive mainly on that account, 

 just as blue and some purples delight us chiefly 

 because of their associations with the human iris. 

 The skin, too, needed some beautiful colour, and 

 there were red as well as blue flowers in the bunch ; 

 and the red flowers being most abundant in nature 

 and in greater variety of tints, give us altogether 

 more pleasure than their beautiful rivals in our 

 affection. 



The blue flower is associated, consciously or not, 

 with the human blue eye ; and as the floral blue 

 is in all or nearly all instances pure and beautiful, 

 it is like the most beautiful human eye. This 

 association, and not the colour itself, strikes me 

 as the true cause of the superior attraction which 

 the blue flower has for most of us. Apart from 

 association blue is less attractive than red, orange, 

 and yellow, because less luminous ; furthermore 

 green is the least effective background for such 

 a colour as blue in so small an object as a flower ; 

 and, as a fact, we see that at a little distance the 

 blue of the flower is absorbed and disappears in 

 the surrounding green, while reds and yellows 

 keep their splendour. Nevertheless the blue has 

 a stronger hold on our affections. As a human 

 colour, blue comes first in a blue-eyed race because 



