V 
COLQUES OF ANIMALS 
343 
the beautiful “peacock,” “Camberwell beauty,” and “red 
admiral” butterflies, are quite up to the average of tropi- 
cal colour in the same group ; and the remark 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 directly 
dependent on climate and vegetation, we find even greater 
anomalies. In the immense family of the Carabideo or pre- 
daceous ground -beetles, the northern forms fully equal, if 
they do not surpass, all that the tropics can produce. Every- 
where, 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 colour to much about 
the same level as that of temperate zones. 
But it is when we come to the vegetable world that the 
greatest misconception on this subject prevails. In abund- 
ance and variety of floral colour the tropics are almost univer- 
sally believed to be pre-eminent, 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 western 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 gaily-coloured 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 colour produced by 
our rhododendrons, azaleas, and camellias, our pelargoniums, 
calceolarias, and cinerarias — all strictly temperate plants — 
can certainly not be surpassed, if they can be equalled, by any 
productions of the tropics. 
It may be objected that most of the plants named are 
choice cultivated varieties , far surpassing in colour the original 
stock, while the tropical plants are mostly, unvaried wild 
species . But this does not really much affect the question at 
issue. For our florists’ gorgeous varieties have all been pro- 
duced under the influence of our cloudy skies, and with even 
a still further deficiency of light, owing to the necessity of 
