ON COLOURS IN NATURE. Bal 
ie Th e remote island, in which I found myself situated, in an 
almost unvisited sea ; the wild, luxuriant tropical forest, ‘which 
stretched far away on every side ; the rude, uncultured savages 
who/gathered round me,—all had their influence in determining 
the emotions with which I gazed upon this ‘ thing of beauty.’ 
VT thought of the long ages of the past during which the 
_ successive generations of this little creature had run their 
course, year by year being born, and living and dying amid 
these gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye to gaze upon their 
loveliness ; to all appearance such a wanton waste of beauty. — 
Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. This consideration 
must snecly tell us that all living things were not made for 
man.» Many of them have no relation to him. The cycle of 
their existence has gone on independently of his, and is dis- 
turbed or broken by every advance in man’s intellectual 
development.” And more to the same purport. 
One object for which the birds of paradise are endowed 
with beauty of plumage,—beauty, be it remarked, entirely 
confined to the cock birds,—is, without doubt, the delight of 
the hens, when their mates, in the case of the creat birds of 
paradise, for example, shake out vines saffron feathers like a 
fountain. | 
To quote from Wallace again on this subject :— 
The birds had now commenced what the people here all 
their ‘ sacaleli,? or dancing parties, in certain trees in the 
forest, which are not fruit-trees, as I at first imagined, but 
which have an immense head of spreading branches and large 
but scattered leaves, giving a clear space for the birds to play . 
and exhibit their plumes. On one of these trees a dozen or 
twenty full-plumaged male birds assemble together, raise up 
their wings, stretch out their necks, and elevate their ex- 
quisite plumes, keeping them in a continual vibration. 
Between whiles they fly across from branch to branch in 
great excitement, so that the whole tree is filled with waving 
plumes in every variety of attitude and motion.” 
I find it difficult to reconcile the different experiences of 
Wallace and Kingsley on the subject of colour in the flora 
of the tropics as affecting the general scenery. Itis true that 
Kingsley visited the West Indies and Wallace the Malay 
Archipelago, but the latter was also familiar with the New 
World, having previously visited the Amazon, or some of the 
tributary branches of that mighty river. 
_ The discrepancy had best be given in their own words. 
Wallace says :— 
“Persons who have formed the usual ideas of the vegetation 
SVOLy Xe . (oust 
