1877.) The Colors of Animals and Plants. 645 
ation between the species of cold and warm countries. Thus the 
European Vanessides, including the beautiful “ peacock,” “ Cam- 
berwell beauty,” and “ red admiral” butterflies, are quite up to 
the average of tropical beauty in the same group, and the re- 
mark will equally apply to the little “ blues” and ‘coppers ;” 
while the Alpine * Apollo” butterflies have a delicate beauty 
that can hardly be surpassed. In other insects, which are less di- 
rectly dependent on climate and vegetation, we find even greater 
anomalies. In the immense family of the Carabidæ or predaceous 
ground-beetles the northern forms fully equal, if they do not 
surpass, all that the tropics can produce. Everywhere, too, in 
hot countries, there are thousands of obscure species of insects 
which, if they were all collected, would not improbably bring 
down the average of color to much about the same level as that 
of temperate zones. 
But it is when we come to the vegetable world that the great- 
est misconception on this subject prevails. In abundance and 
variety of floral color the tropics are almost universally believed 
to be preéminent, not only absolutely, but relatively to the whole 
mass of vegetation and the total number of species. Twelve 
years of observation among the vegetation of the eastern and west- 
ern tropics has, however, convinced me that this notion is entirely 
erroneous, and that, in proportion to the whole number of species 
of plants, those having gayly colored flowers are actually more 
abundant in the temperate zones than between the tropics. This 
will be found to be not so extravagant an assertion as it may at 
first appear if we consider how many of the choicest adornments 
of our greenhouses and flower shows are really temperate as 
Opposed to tropical plants. The masses of color produced by our 
thododendrons, azaleas, and camellias, our pelargoniums, calceo- 
larias, and cinerarias,— all strictly temperate plants, — can cer- 
tainly not be surpassed, if they can be equaled, by any produc- 
tions of the tropics.! But we may go further, and say that the 
ki It meee f be objected that most of the plants named are choice, cultivated varieties, 
Surpassing in color the original stock, while the tropical plants are mostly un- 
Varied wild species. But this does not really much affect the question at issue. For 
our florists’ gorgeous varieties have all been produced under the influence of our 
rte skies, and with even a still further deficiency of light, owing to the necessity 
Protecting them under glass from our sudden changes of temperature, sg that they 
‘Are themselves an additional proof that tropical light and heat are not needed for the 
Saag of intense and varied color. Another import nt id i 4 i 
if àt afl Wla in many cases displace a number of wild species which are Mo 
colis ii ed. Thus there are scores of species of wild hollyhocks varying in 
as much as the cultivated varieties, and the same may be said of the 
At nt the 
cnar THese 
