GAY PLUMES AND DULL 



new and incalculable kind — the danger from man 

 and artificial conditions. Man demoralizes Nature 

 whenever he touches her, in savage tribes and in 

 animal life, as well as in the fields and woods. He 

 makes sharp contrasts wherever he goes, in forms, 

 in colors, in sounds, in odors, and it is not to be 

 wondered at that animals brought under his in- 

 fluence come in time to show, more or less, these 

 contrasts. The tendency to variation is stimulated; 

 form as well as color is rapidly modified; the old 

 order is broken up, and the animal comes to partake 

 more or less of the bizarre condition that surrounds 

 it. Nature when left to herself is harmonious; 

 man makes discords, or harmony of another order. 

 The instincts of wild animals are much more keen 

 and invariable than are those of animals in do- 

 mestication, the conditions of their lives being far 

 more rigid and exacting. Remove the eggs from a 

 wild bird's nest and she instantly deserts it; but 

 a domestic fowl will incubate an empty nest for 

 days. For the same reason the colors of animals 

 in domestication are less constant than in the 

 wild state; they break up and become much more 

 bizarre and capricious. 



Cultivated plants depart more from a fixed type 

 than do plants of the fields and the woods. See 

 what outre forms and colors the cultivated flowers 

 display! 



The pressure of fear is of course much greater 

 69 



