v COLOURS OF ANIMALS 339 



a marvellous and ever-changing picture. In contrast with 

 these broad and soothing tints, we have presented to us in 

 the vegetable and animal worlds an infinite variety of objects 

 adorned with the most beautiful and most varied hues. 

 Flowers, insects, and birds are the organisms most generally 

 ornamented in this way ; and their symmetry of form, their 

 variety of structure, and the lavish abundance with which 

 they clothe and enliven the earth, cause them to be objects 

 of universal admiration. The relation of this wealth of colour 

 to our mental and moral nature is indisputable. The child 

 and the savage alike admire the gay tints of flower, bird, 

 and insect ; while to many of us their contemplation brings a 

 solace and enjoyment which is both intellectually and morally 

 beneficial. It can then hardly excite surprise that this rela- 

 tion was long thought to afford a sufficient explanation of the 

 phenomena of colour in nature ; and although the fact that 



Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 

 And waste its sweetness on the desert air, 



might seem to throw some doubt on the sufficiency of the 

 explanation, the answer was easy, that in the progress of 

 discovery man would, sooner or later, find out and enjoy 

 every beauty that the hidden recesses of the earth have in 

 store for him. This theory received great support from the 

 difficulty of conceiving any other use or meaning in the 

 colours with which so many natural objects are adorned. 

 Why should the homely gorse be clothed in golden raiment, 

 and the prickly cactus be adorned with crimson bells ? Why 

 should our fields be gay with buttercups, and the heather-clad 

 mountains be clad in purple robes ? Why should every land 

 produce its own peculiar floral gems, and the alpine rocks 

 glow with beauty, if not for the contemplation and enjoyment 

 of man ? What could be the use to the butterfly of its gaily- 

 painted wings, or to the humming-bird of its jewelled breast, 

 except to add the final touches to a world-picture, calculated at 

 once to please and to refine mankind ? And even now, with all our 

 recently acquired knowledge of this subject, who shall say that 

 these old-world views were not intrinsically and fundamentally 

 sound; and that, although we now know that colour has "uses" 

 in nature that we little dreamt of, yet the relation of those 

 colours or rather of the various rays of light to our senses 



