PROTECTIVE COLORATION. 85 



varied, the colours would be invisible at night, and could do 

 their possessors no harm or good. During the daytime most 

 of the nocturnal insects hide themselves among herbage, or in 

 nooks and crannies. A few brilliantly coloured species, like 

 the Red and Crimson Underwings, have these brilliant colours 

 ■confined to the second pair of wings, which are covered over 

 when the insect is at rest by the dull-coloured upper wings. 

 The dull colours of moths, which habitually fly at night, ought 

 rather, perhaps, if we accept the influence of natural selection 

 upon coloration, to be regarded as useful for protection 

 •during the daytime. 



Special Colour Resemblances. 



These are so numerous that it will be impossible to give 

 more than a few examples, which will be selected from as 

 many groups of the animal kingdom as possible. 



Most persons who had only seen these animals in the 

 Zoological Gardens would be inclined to look upon the giraffe, 

 the zebra, and the jagaar as among the most conspicuously 

 <;oloured of the Mammalia ; and yet we are assured, by those 

 who have seen them in their native countries, that they are 

 most difficult to detect. The spots upon the jaguar harmonise 

 with the oval patches of sunlight which penetrate between the 

 leaves of the trees upon which it lives. 



Sir Samuel Baker, in a very interesting work recently 

 published, and entitled "Wild Beasts and their Ways," 

 remarks (vol. i., p. 191) of the tiger:— "The striped skin 

 of the tiger harmonizes in a peculiar manner with dry sticks, 

 yellowish tufts of grass, and the remains of burnt stumps, 

 which are so frequently the family of colours that form the 

 surroundings of the animal." With regard to the giraffe, 

 another apparently conspicuous animal, the same author 



