CONSPICUOUS COLOUR 23 
The face of our earth is, broadly speaking, 
coloured with secondary colours, greens, 
browns, and greys; these colours are not 
laid down in flat tints but in broken masses, 
which run one into the other, and nowhere 
have defined margins. Individual leaves and 
single stones can only be distinguished at 
close range, and are then seen never to be 
homogeneously coloured. 
Certain portions of the globe are not so 
coloured. The Arctic regions, mountain tops, 
and sub-arctic regions in the winter are 
covered with an even cloak of white; deserts 
are evenly coloured light brown ; oceans grey 
or blue ; sky blue. 
Into these backgrounds many animals fade, 
through similarity of colouring. Spotted coats 
and barred plumes of brown, green, and grey 
blend with the field and forest; white animals 
in the snow, sandy-coloured in the desert, 
grey at sea, &c., are invisible from afar. 
Against these backgrounds certain parts 
of plants and many animals stand out in 
marked contrast —how are they coloured ? 
In an exactly opposite manner: instead of 
being coloured with secondary colours, the 
primary ones are used, red, yellow, blue, with 
black and white; and instead of the colour 
