ITS BEAUTY OF COLOUR, 41 



him. Its ground colour is a greenish grey, but so 

 translucent that we can hardly assign any hue-proper 

 to it. This is marked with several stripes of rich 

 deep brown, running longitudinally, each stripe being 

 edged with buff. Then the body, or more correctly 

 the abdomen^ is marked with about a dozen stripes of 

 similar colour, but set transversely, girding the seg- 

 ments round with a series of dark lines ; and the last 

 segment before the setting on of the tail-fins has 

 three lines running lengthwise again. 



Now we come to the tail. But here the pen fails ; 

 only the pencil could convey an adequate idea of this 

 exquisitely painted organ. The four oval plates, that 

 play over each other, and that form a broad and 

 powerful fin when expanded, are bordered with a pale 

 red band: the outer pair have in the centre a red 

 spot, the inner pair a streak of the same hue ; each 

 plate has near its extremity a spot of cream-white 

 (much larger on the outer pair) made more conspicu- 

 ous by being broadly margined by reddish brown. 

 Finally the plates are studded all over with red specks, 

 which when magnified are seen to be stars. Besides 

 these colours, there are scattered over the body in 

 symmetrical order, several spots of opaque cream 

 white, and some of pale chesnut or fawn-brown. And 

 to close this enumeration of colours, the claws and 

 feet are light blue, encircled at regular distances by 

 bands, of which half is deep purple and the other 

 half pale orange. I have not spoken of the fringes of 

 the jaw-plates, nor of those that terminate the tail-fin, 

 but the structure of these is exquisitely fine, especially 

 when examined with a lens. 



