ASSIMILATIVE COLOURATION. 405 
from Reigate to Farnham. Between the chalk and the sand is 
an exceedingly narrow tract of blue clay, sometimes scarcely ten 
yards in width. These three distinct soils do not gradually 
intermingle, but are separated by the most.abrupt transitions, 
and their effect on the produce where the three soils occur in the 
Same field is very marked. . . . Wherever the sand bears the 
red tint of iron, the chief natural produce is furze; but this 
colour, as we proceed westwards, yields to a blue tint. The two 
colours stain the wool of the sheep which range the wastes, and 
the red and blue are very conspicuous in their fleeces, the blue 
being much preferred.” * In Hampshire, Mr. Starkie Gardner 
states, ‘‘the heath is in some patches of a magenta colour where 
a crimson clay patch forms the soil.” + Lord Walsingham’s head 
keeper told Mr. R. Kearton that “stiff clay land on which 
pheasants feed produces dark-coloured eggs, and a light sandy 
soil pale-coloured ones’; and the writer remarks: ‘‘ This con- 
tention he certainly supported by several instances which he 
brought under my notice, although other keepers to whom I 
have mentioned the circumstance have no faith in its accuracy.’”’} 
‘In British Guiana some have gone so far as to say that they 
can tell when an auriferous district has been reached by the 
prevalence of certain kinds of birds and Monkeys. ‘This can be 
easily understood when the close connection of the trees with the 
soil, and the fruit with the animals, is considered.”§ In the 
Magango country of Equatorial Africa, Emin Pasha speaks of 
“the red clayey ground,” and describes the red blooming Canna 
as ‘“‘being everywhere abundant.’ || These observations could 
doubtless be multiplied if interest was awakened on the question, 
as on the ‘‘reddish argillaceous earth, called ‘ Pampean mud,’” 
which overspreads the Rio Plata region, or on the immense 
granite formation which forms one of the geological features of 
the State of Perak in the Malay Peninsula, of which ‘the pre- 
vailing colour is blue.” ** ‘The nature of the environment has 
* ‘Letters of Rusticus,’ pp. 1-2. + ‘Nature,’ vol. xv. p. 230. 
t ‘With Nature and a Camera,’ p. 166. 
§ James Rodway, ‘In the Guiana Forest,’ p. 81. 
|| ‘ Hmin Pasha in Central Africa,’ p. 26. 
1 Orton, ‘The Andes and the Amazon,’ p. 283. 
** Tenison-Woods, ‘ Nature,’ vol. xxx1. p. 152. 
