1864.] Bartes’s Naturalist on the Amazons. 187 
it is a childish notion, that the beauty of birds, insects, and other 
creatures is given to please the human eye. Surely rich plumage and 
song, like all other endowments of species, are given them for their 
own pleasure and advantage. This, if true, ought to enlarge our 
ideas of the inner life and mutual relations of our humbler fellow- 
creatures !” 
Again, the similarity of the colour of the insect to the ground it 
inhabits is an interesting problem touched upon at vol. i. p. 207. 
This assimilation is exhibited by some and not by others, the dress of 
some species being in striking contrast to the colours of their dwell- 
ing-place. But, as Mr. Bates remarks—The species not so protected 
“has means of protection of quite a different nature, and therefore does 
not need the peculiar mode of disguise enjoyed by its companion ;” 
and he properly infers, “that the fact of some species not exhibiting 
the same adaptation of colours to dwelling-places as their companion 
species, does not throw doubt on the explanation given of the adapta- 
tion, but is rather confirmatory of it.” 
Mr. Bates supports by observation Darwin’s views of the compe- 
tition existing amongst organized beings, and illustrates it in the 
vegetable world by the growth of the Amazons forest, especially by 
the Murderer Liana, a species of fig, which puts forth arm-like 
branches from side to side, which meet together, and clasping one 
another mount upwards, tightly encircling the tree which supports it 
with inflexible rings, till at length the tree is killed, and “ the strange 
spectacle remains of the selfish parasite, clasping in its arms the life- 
less and decaying body of its victim, which had been a help to its own 
growth. Its ends have been served; it has flowered and fruited, 
reproduced and disseminated its kind; and now when the dead trunk 
moulders away, its own end approaches, its support is gone, and 
itself also falls.” Thus the Liana merely exhibits, im a more con- 
spicuous manner than usual, the struggle which necessarily exists 
amongst vegetable forms in these crowded forests, when individual 
is competing with individual, and species with species, all striving to 
reach ght and air, in order to unfold their leaves and perfect their 
organs of fructification. But “there is plenty in tropical nature to 
counteract any unpleasant impression which the reckless energy of 
the vegetation might produce. There is the incomparable beauty and 
variety of the foliage, the vivid colours, the richness and exuberance 
everywhere displayed, which make, in my opinion, the richest wood- 
land scenery in Northern Europe a sterile desert in comparison. But 
it is especially the enjoyment of life manifested by individual exist- 
ences, which compensates for the destruction and pain caused by in- 
evitable competition.” (vol. i. p. 56.) 
But Mr. Bates’s strongest article of alliance with Mr. Darwin is 
upon the subject of mimetic resemblances. This curious topic, touched 
upon in several places in his work, has received further elucidation in 
the admirable and elaborate memoir referred to at the head of this 
article. This memoir was read to the Linnean Socicty, Nov. 21st, 
1861, and long preceded, therefore, his two volumes of travel, to which we 
