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CHAPTER VIII 



THE COLOURS OF ANIMALS 



The Primary Meanings of Animal Pigments. In 

 man and creature colour is sacramental. Complexion 

 in man is a sign of racial constitution and tempera- 

 ment, and colour in animals is the expression of that 

 hidden working which controls, and is controlled by, 

 their life. 



We regard, and rightly regard, the body as fuel for 

 fire ; its activity as the outcome of a combustion 

 which is fed by food and fanned by air, the engendered 

 heat being carried by those hot-water pipes, the 

 arteries, to the remotest outworks of skin and muscle, 

 of bone and nerve, there to replenish the loss which 

 secretion, movement, and nervous activity involve. 

 And as from coal we can obtain not only heat, but 

 tarry matters and aniline dyes, so from the slow 

 combustion of the tissues does the body deposit 

 those grains of matter which, when exposed to the 

 light and air, become pigment, as a cut apple goes 

 brown or a chipped toadstool blue. Colour is thus 

 distilled, as it were, from the whole body, and resumes 

 its essence in a seemingly surface finish. I 



If we now review the colours of animals, we are 



