396 Colour and its Recognition. [June, 
that, practically speaking, our idea of colour corresponds 
with that of the lower animals. He traces a connection 
between sight and the power of locomotion, contending that 
this sense is most developed among winged creatures. 
We find it, then, asserted, that a perception and taste for 
colour is first aroused in animals by the influence of the 
objects on which they feed. On the other hand, the disci- 
ples of the new school of Natural History — and no one 
more emphatically than our author — contend that it is to 
the colour-sense, especially of inseCts and birds, that we 
owe all the varied colouration of blossoms and fruits as dis- 
tinct from the monotonous green of earlier geological 
epochs. We can admit that, in virtue of the principle of 
Natural Selection, the smallest step on the part of a 
plant to produce a gay efflorescence, or the smallest 
step on the part of an inseCt towards the appreciation of 
a source of edible pollen or saccharine matter, would, 
pro tanto , give the advantage in the struggle for existence 
to the species in which it might occur. But where and 
how was the first step taken ? “ Did flowers show an 
original tendency to the production of coloured adjuncts 
prior to the selective action of inseCts ? Did inseCts 
possess any tendency vaguely to discriminate colours apart 
from the reaCtive influence of entomophilous flowers?” 
Mr. Allen, in addressing himself to these questions, argues 
that the normal green colour of plants is connected with 
de-oxidation, and the consequent storing up of energy. 
But where oxidation and the expenditure of energy are 
known to be in progress, — as in decaying leaves, in buds, 
young shoots, and sprouts, especially those put forth in the 
dark, where the reductive aCtion of the solar rays is of 
course wanting, — we find a rich and varied display of colour. 
The author gives as instances the sprouts of peonies, which 
are of a full dark red : the rosy stems and yellow early 
leaves of rhubarb, &c. Now all these colours are indeed 
merely adventitious. But in flowers, where the colouration 
is a “purposive adaptation,” we find, even in anemophilous 
species, a rise of temperature, from which we know that 
oxidation is in progress. Hence we may naturally expeCt 
that all floral organs, whether anemophilous or entomophi- 
lous, would have a tendency to the production of bright 
colours. This is accordingly seen even in the mosses, lyco- 
pods, and ferns. We have thus a groundwork of differenti- 
ated colouring upon which Natural Selection or any other 
agency may operate. The author accordingly decides that 
“ the bright pigments of entomophilous plants are due 
