How Theories are Manufactured 85 



the Grebes, which skulk among reeds and spend much 

 of their life beneath the water, have a strong tendency 

 for brilliant decorations, orange-red horns, chestnut 

 crests, rose-tinted beaks, and green feet. 



It would also be a not uninteresting subject of inquiry 

 whether the colours displayed by fruit and flower in 

 tropical forests, be really so pre-eminently brilliant as 

 to account for the hues of the birds and butterflies 

 whose lot is cast amongst them. Mr. Wallace, who so 

 thoroughly explored the Malay Archipelago with its 

 "gorgeous fruits and flowers," 1 tells a different story. 

 " The reader familiar with tropical nature only through the 

 medium of books and botanical gardens, will picture to 

 himself many other natural beauties. He will think that 

 I have unaccountably forgotten to mention the brilliant 

 flowers, in masses of crimson, gold, or azure. But what 

 is the reality? Not one single spot of bright colour 

 could be seen, not one single tree or bush or creeper bore 

 a flower sufficiently conspicuous to form an object in 

 the landscape : there was no brilliancy of colour, none 

 of those bright flowers and gorgeous masses of blossom 

 so generally considered to be everywhere present in the 

 tropics. I have given an accurate sketch of a luxuriant 

 tropical scene, as noted down on the spot, and its general 

 characteristics as regards colour have been so often 

 repeated, both in South America and over many 

 thousand miles in the Eastern tropics, that I am driven 

 to conclude that it represents the general aspect of nature 

 in the equatorial (that is, the most tropical) parts of the 

 tropical regions." 2 



Mr. Wallace goes on to ask and answer a significant 

 question. " How is it, then, that the descriptions of 

 travellers generally give a very different idea ? and where, 

 it may be asked, are the glorious flowers that we know 

 to exist in the tropics ? These questions can be easily 

 answered. The fine tropical flowering-plants cultivated 

 in our hot-houses have been culled from the most varied 



1 Evolutionist at Large, p. 191. 

 8 Malay Archipelago, vol. i. p. 371. 



