SYMPATHETIC COLOURATION 177 



outline by a meagre supply of red pigments, each larva 

 Hippolyte issues on the world unaided. It is a born 

 artist, but without any bias that leads it to adopt any 

 style of painting, save that which its first and succeed- 

 ing stranding-places suggest. Such struggling genius 

 has met with success. Our coast forests are thronged 

 by invisible prawns, seated on bole or branch, and 

 coloured in sympathy therewith. Restfulness is their 

 mark, that receptive attitude in which the cryptic 

 artist receives and embodies the messages of light 

 and shade that fall around him. 



Nor is Hippolyte the only nor even the best 

 known case of sympathetic colouration. 



Among some sea-forests live a multitude of other 

 creatures hardly less harmoniously tinted. There are 

 sea-spiders whose colour varies with the weed upon 

 which they rest ; the cousins of the jumping beach- 

 flea, whose bodies reflect their roosting-places down 

 to the minutest detail ; the pipe-fish, whose shape, 

 colour and swaying movements make him a part of 

 the sea-grass : the male of which carries the eggs 

 under his body, as though to mimic the flower of the 

 grass. Under the broken lights of sea-tangle young 

 cod, pollack, and a hundred other varieties may be 

 passed unnoticed, so well does their chequered skin 

 harmonise with the light and shadow. 



On the sandy shore, away from the rocks, we find 

 a similar avoidance of contrast, a colour sympathy 

 between the sand-dwellers and their resting-place. 

 The dabs and shrimps, the dragonet and goby, the 



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