COLOUR- VARIATION 49 



ne crede color i. It may be noticed here that persons who 

 want their supposed good sayings to travel far and 

 long, should always say them in Latin ; if Linnaeus 

 had written the four words above in good sensible 

 English, or in clear French, his saying, which seems 

 to be a sort of divinely inspired axiom for many, 

 would never have met with the success it has obtained, 

 and it would have been better. Perhaps the fact that 

 these words are a quotation from Virgil (Eclogues, ii. 

 17) has something to do with the matter. Accepting 

 this dictum, many have considered colour as of no im- 

 portance in the organism, whereas in many cases it is 

 demonstrably of high import. 1 And, as we shall see 

 further on, variations in colour cannot be considered 

 as mere freaks of nature, however abundant they may 

 be, for where colour varies, there is also a more or 

 less pronounced variation in other characters, and 

 more especially in some interior and less easily 

 appreciated characters of chemical nature. And no 

 one can dispute the import of chemical characters, 

 when one knows the influence of chemical media on 

 most organisms. So, while recognizing with Linnaeus 

 that colour is certainly in many cases a very variable 

 character, I would refrain from repeating after so many 

 others nimium ne crede colori. For colour is a specific 



1 Concerning the uses of colour see especially A. R. Wallace's 

 Danvinism, which contains an excellent account of the matter. 



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