COLOURATION IN ANIMALS AND PLANTS. 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTION, 



BEFORE Darwin published his remarkable and memorable work 

 on the Origin of Species, the decoration of animals and plants 

 was a mystery as much hidden to the majority as the beauty of the 

 rainbow ere Newton analysed the light. That the world teemed 

 with beauty in form and colour was all we knew ; and the only guess 

 that could be made as to its uses was the vague and unsatisfactory 

 suggestion that it was appointed for the delight of man. 



Why, if such was the case, so many flowers were " born to blush 

 unseen," so many insects hidden in untrodden forests, so many 

 bright-robed creatures buried in the depths of the sea, no man could 

 tell. It seemed but a poor display of creative intelligence to 

 lavish for thousands of years upon heedless savage eyes such glories 

 as are displayed by the forests of Brazil; and the mind recoiled 

 from the suggestion that such could ever have been the prime 

 intention. 



But with the dawn of the new scientific faith, light began to shine 

 upon these and kindred questions ; nature ceased to appear a mass 

 of useless, unconnected facts, and ornamentation appeared in its true 

 guise as of extreme importance to the beings possessing it. It was 

 the theory of descent with modification that threw this light upon 

 nature. 



This theory, reduced to its simplest terms, is that species, past 

 and present, have arisen from the accumulation by inheritance of 

 minute differences of form, structure, colour, or habit, giving to the 



