SECONDARY VALUES OF COLOURS 189 



reason. But if we look back on the history of animal 

 colouration as we have attempted to sketch it in 

 the preceding pages, we realise that the pigments 

 of animals are older than the effect they produce, and 

 that the old nutritive, purifying, and respiratory uses 

 of colour are the basis for the more recently evolved 

 protective, warning, or mimetic values of colouration. 



Impressive and important as those values are, they 

 could not have been achieved unless there had been 

 a sound constitutional basis to underlie their working. 

 Like some youthful prodigy who startles the world by 

 his violin-playing or reviews, the facts of protection 

 seem created to produce the results that so impress 

 us. But as the artist works through the aid of a 

 constitution that ages of unregarded, serene toil have 

 bequeathed to him, so the mimetic butterfly or prawn 

 has produced its effect through the aid of processes and 

 by the use of materials that its ancestors utilised for 

 their more ancient ways of life. 



REFERENCES 



Newbigin, M. ' Colour in Nature.' Murray. 



Poulton, E. B. ' Colours of Animals.' Inter. Sci. Series, 

 vol. 68. 



Darwin, C. ' Descent of Man.' Murray. 



Thayer, A. H. 'Protective Coloration.' Trans. En- 

 tomolog. Society of London. 1903. P. 553. 



