MENTAL DIFFERENCE AND DISORDER. 223 



excitement of the poor animal is attributable to the redness 

 of the little flags used by the picadors, and I have utterly 

 failed to satisfy myself that without the other and more 

 powerful accessories, the goading with the picador's spears, 

 the mental confusion produced by so novel a combination of 

 distracting sights and sounds, the mere exhibition of any- 

 thing red would have produced fury or have developed com- 

 bativeness. Thus in the most recent account I have seen of 

 one of these pitiable exhibitions of Spanish ' sport,' we are 

 told that before the bull- victim e rushes wildly ' at the piece 

 of scarlet cloth held on the end of a small stick by the 

 matador, it is already ' infuriated ' by the barbarous treat- 

 ment to which it has been subjected. 



So experienced a traveller as Gillmore asserts that scarlet, 

 ( as everyone knows, has a most exciting influence upon 

 many animals, horned cattle in particular,' and he gives a 

 case of assault by a bull on an old woman habited in a red 

 or scarlet cloak. But here again it is not clear that it was 

 the colour that attracted the bull, in so far as we are told 

 that ' at first the animal only slowly approached her. But 

 the old woman, becoming terrified, bolted for the exit of 

 the field, and in her efforts to gain it missed her footing and 

 fell;' then the bull made up to and bruised her with his 

 horns, ' at the same time dragging her cloak off her back.' 



Rats are said to be terrified or scared by scarlet, and it 

 would be a happy thing for many a vermin-haunted house- 

 hold were this the case, and were it really possible by so 

 simple a device as the use of this, or any other colour, to 

 scare away such unwelcome pests. But I have met with as 

 little proof of the accuracy of such a statement as in the 

 case of the bull. Rowan describes the effects of a red cloth 

 on the loon of Canada, while a correspondent of ' Science 

 Gossip ' says of the cassowary, ' Scarlet cloth excites its ire.' 



Red proves attractive or exciting sometimes simply by 

 virtue of its being a bright colour, similar effects being 

 produced, but not so readily, by blue and white. Gillmore 

 mentions that tying a piece of scarlet cloth round the neck 

 of a domestic turkey and turning it loose on the prairies 

 brought all the wild ones in the neighbourhood about it to 



