ON COLOURS IN NATURE. 99 
Now Mr. Kingsley’s contrary view, as told in his Chvrist- 
mas mm the West Indies. His whole description of the 
unspeakable marvels of a tropical forest extends over many 
pages, but I will select a few passages descriptive of flowering 
shrubs :— 
“ Beyond it [namely, a coco-palm], again, blaze great 
orange and yellow flowers, with long stamens, and _pistils 
curying upwards out of them. ‘They belong to a twining, 
scrambling bush, with finely-pinnated mimosa leaves. That 
is the ‘flower fence,’ so often heard of in past years, and 
round it hurries to and fro a great orange butterfly, larger 
seemingly than any Hnglish kind. Next to it is a row of 
hibiscus shrubs with broad crimson flowers. Over the low 
roof rises a tall tree, which looks like a walnut, but is not 
one; it is the pout of the Indians, and will be covered slowly 
with brilliant saffron flowers.” 
And again: ‘‘ And yet, where the fire passed six months 
ago, all is now a fresh, impenetrable undergrowth of green 
creepers, covering the land, climbing up and _ shrouding 
the charred stumps. Young palms, like Prince of Wales’s 
feathers, breaking up, six or eight feet high, among a 
wilderness of sensitive plants, scarlet-flowered dwarf Balisiers, 
climbing fern, convolvuluses of every hue, and an endless 
variety of outlandish leaves, over which flutter troops of 
butterflies.” 
Again: “Oh that we could show you the view in front. 
The lawn, with its flowering shrubs, tiny specimens of 
which we admire in hot-houses at home; the grass as 
green (for it is now the end of the rainy season) as that 
of Kngland in May, winding away into the cool shade of 
strange evergreens; the yellow cocoa-nut palms on the 
nearest spur of hill throwing back the tender blue of the 
higher mountains; the large central group of trees,— 
Saman, Sandbox, and Fig,—with the bright ostrich plumes 
of a climbing palm towering through the mimosa-like 
foliage of the Saman and Hrythrinas (Bois wmortelles, as 
they call them here), their all but leafless boughs now blazing 
against the blue sky with vermilion flowers, trees of red coral, 
sixty feet in height,” 
Again: ‘ One tall coolie ship at anchor seen above green 
cane fields and coolie gardens, gay with yellow Croton, and 
purple Dracena, and crimson Poinsettia, and the grand leaves 
of the grandest of all plants,—the Banana,—food of Paradise.” 
And yet once more: “ Under the perpetual shade of the 
evergreens haunt Heliconias and other delicate butterflies 
H 2 
