222 PHYSICAL CAUSES OF 



bodies. As instances of insurmountable antipathies to cer- 

 tain marked colours Pierquin cites the case of a horse and of 

 some birds in regard to black. Baker remarks on the ob- 

 noxiousness of white or grey colours to the elephant and 

 rhinoceros. Various examples of animals enraged or mad- 

 dened by colours are given in the ' Percy Anecdotes.' Eodel 

 describes some of the dislikes of certain animals to certain 

 colours as amounting to a monomania. Meas in Ceylon 

 6 have a great fancy for settling upon anything white. Thus 

 a person with white trousers will be blackened with them, 

 while a man in darker colours will be comparatively free ' 

 (Baker). A Madagascar bishop bird, belonging to a lady 

 friend of my own in Edinburgh, has a dread of white 

 colours, becoming excited immediately on the sight thereof. 

 White animals are especially liable to persecution by black 

 individuals of the same species as in the case of the Faroese 

 and other ravens (Darwin) ; and there are other instances of 

 animals persecuting each other in consequence apparently of 

 exceptional peculiarities of colour. 



The effects of red especially of scarlet colours are, 

 however, usually supposed to be those which are at once 

 most incontrovertible and most familiar. No simile is more 

 common in reference to a subject or object calculated to 

 annoy, than that of the alleged influence of the display of a 

 red rag or flag upon a bull. But curiously enough, in all my 

 reading and observation, in all my conversations with per- 

 sons familiar with the habits of wild and domestic animals, 

 I have met with nothing like proof that mere redness, as a 

 colour, is offensive to the bull. I have frequently been told 

 that there can be no doubt about its so being, because every- 

 body believes it to be true, and what 'everybody believes 

 must be true.' But I cannot accept mere popular belief on 

 such a point, or on any point in the natural history of ani- 

 mal mind, as equivalent to the demonstration of the accuracy 

 of what is alleged to be fact. If the fact is so familiar, 

 ample proof direct from nature should be constantly forth- 

 coming, and it is not. 



I have specially read accounts of bull-fights in Spain in 

 order to discover how far the artificially produced mental 



