Nature's Night Lights. 175 
with fear) in the effect which mere brightness has 
on us, both by day and night. 
On riding across the monotonous grey Patagonian 
uplands, where often for hours one sees not the 
faintest tinge of bright colour, the intense glowing 
crimson of a cactus-fruit, or the broad shining 
white bosom of the Patagonian eagle-buzzard 
(Buteo erythronotus), perched on the summit of a 
distant bush, has had a strangely fascinating effect 
on me, so that I have been unable to take my eyes 
off it as long as it continued before me. Or in 
passing through extensive desolate marshes, the 
dazzling white plumage of a stationary egret has 
exercised the same attraction. At night we ex- 
perience the sensation in a greater degree, when the 
silver sheen of the moon makes a broad path on 
the water; or when a meteor leaves a glowing 
track across the sky; while a still more familiar 
instance is seen in the powerful attraction on the 
sight of glowing embers in a darkened room. The 
mere brightness, or vividness of the contrast, 
fascinates the mind; but the effect on man is 
comparatively weak, owing to his fiery education 
and to his familiarity with brilliant dyes artificially 
obtained from nature. How strong this attraction 
of mere brightness, even where there is no mystery 
about it, is to wild animals is shown by birds of 
prey almost invariably singling out white or bright- 
plumaged birds for attack where bright and sober- 
coloured kinds are mingled together. By night the 
attraction 1s immeasurably greater than by day, 
and the light of a fire steadily gazed at quickly 
confuses the mind. The fires which travellers make 
