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 is immeasurably greater than by day, 

 and the light of a fire steadily gaze'd at quickly 

 confuses the mind. The fires which travellers make 



