GENERAL AD.U^TATIOXS 335 



of colour in nature, and this received great support from the dilTi- 

 culty of conceiving any other use or meaning in the colours with 

 which so many natural objects are adorned. Why should the 

 homely gorse be clothed in golden ruiiiiuiit, and the prickly cactus 

 be adorned with crimson bells? Why sliould our fields be gay with 

 buttercups, and the heather-clad mountains be clad in purple robes? 

 Why should every land produce its own peculiar floral gems, and 

 the alpine rocks glow with beauty, if not for the contemplation and 

 enjoyment of man? What could be the use to the butterfly of 

 its gaily-painted wings, or to the humming-bird of its jewelled 

 breast, except to add the final touches to a world-picture calculated 

 at once to please and to refine mankind? And even now, with all 

 our recently acquired knowledge of this subject, who shall say 

 that these old-world views were not intrinsically and fundamentally 

 sound; and that although we now know that colour has * uses ' 

 in nature that we little dreamt of, yet the relations of those colours 

 — or rather of the various rays of light — to our senses and emo- 

 tions may not be another, and more important use which they sub- 

 serve in the great system of the universe ? " 



The above passage was written more than forty years ago, 

 and I now feel more deeply than ever that the concluding 

 paragraph expresses a great and fundamental truth. Although 

 in the paragraph succeeding that which I have quoted from 

 Grant Allen's book, he refers to my view (stated above) as 

 being '' a strangely gratuitous hypothesis," I now propose to 

 give a few additional reasons for thinking it to be subr^tantially 

 correct. 



The first thing to be noticed is, that the insects whose per- 

 ceptions have led to the production of variously coloured flowers 

 are so very widely removed from all the higher animals (birds 

 and mammals) in their entire organisation that we have no 

 right to assume in them an identity, or even a similarity, of 

 sensation with ourselves. That they see is certain, but that 

 their sensation of sight is the sanio ns our own. or even at all 

 closely resembling it, is highly improbable Still niorc improb- 

 able is it that their perception of oolour i< the same as ours, 

 their organ of sight and their whole nervous system being so 



