Charneleo7i, Colours, Bats, Parrots, Monkeys. 157 



1>lacL-, and the creature carefully avoided it ; but if by chance he 

 came near it, or if a black hat were placed in his way, he Khrunk 

 to a skeleton and became black as jet. It was evident, by the 

 care he took to avoid those objects which occasioned this chanj^e 

 that it was painful to hirn. The colour seemed to operate like 

 a poison. 



" The fact," says the Quarterly Review, «^' is highly curious, and 

 deserves further investigation. We know but little" of the man- 

 ner in which animals are affected by colours, and that little is 

 only knomi popularly. The buflalo and the bull are enraged by 

 ^carlet, which, according to the blind man's notion, acts upon 

 them like the sound of a trumpet. Is it because the viper has 

 a like antipathy, tliat the vijjer-catchers present a red rag, when 

 they provoke it to bite, to extract its fangs ? Daffodils, or any- 

 bright yellow flowers, will decoy perch into a drum-net. He 

 ,who wears a black hat in summer will have tenfold the number 

 of flies u]3on it that his companion will have upon a white one. 

 When more observations of tliis kind have been made and classi- 

 fied, they may lead to some consequences of practical utility. 

 Vv'e have observed that black clothes attract and retain odours 

 more sensibly than light ones : — Is it not possible that they may 

 more readily contract and communicate infection ? Speculations 

 of this kind, when they occur to us, we scatter like seed by the 

 way side. The old corpuscular philosophy has found an able 

 advocate in Mr. Dalton, and in an age of careful and suspicious 

 experimentalists it may produce useful results."' 



Obliged one night to take up his quarters in the tomb-ch.ara- 

 bers of a Mahomedan grave (for the houses were not to be defiled 

 by admitting a Christian), Mr. Forbes had first to drive out the 

 previous occupiers — some enormous bats, from their size deno- 

 minated " flying foxes." These animals frequently measure 

 six feet from wing to wing. 



On the coast where Angcngo is situated, the parrots are as 

 much dreaded at the time of harvest, as a flight of locusts, or a 

 desolating Mahratta army. They darken the air by their num- 

 bers, and when they alight in a rice-field carry off every grain in 

 a few hours. 



At Dhul)oy, the capital of a district containing 84 villages, 

 of which Mr. Forbes was appointed governor (after its surrender 

 to General (ioddard in 17S0), he found as many monkeys as hu- 

 man beings. They seemed to have full possession of all the 

 roofs of the houses ; and they are sometimes ciiUed in as auxi- 

 liaries in disputes between neiglibours. In (jtjarrels of this kind 

 they never have recourse to i)lows, but employ every kind of 

 invective against each other and against all their relatives. The 

 person who is worsted in this war of words, frequently takes an 



opportuuii'.y 



