THE 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
NOVEMBER, 1883. 
I. THE DISTRIBUTION OF COLOUR IN 
REPTILES, BIRDS, AND MAMMALS. 
E take the opportunity of laying before our readers 
some of the main results which Herr Eimer has 
reached in his prolonged investigations on this 
difficult and interesting subject. To the ordinary observer 
the patterns or designs recognisable in animals seem essen- 
tially lawless, — or at least appear to follow no regular, far- 
reaching principle. Even zoological specialists have, for 
the most part, come merely upon a few vague generalisa- 
tions which carry us but a little way. Thus some of our 
correspondents have called attention to the parallel bands, 
at right angles, or nearly so, to the major axis of the body, 
which may be traced in the tiger, the zebra, and in numbers 
of beetles and Lepidoptera,-— in the latter both in the mature 
and the larval condition. 
Herr Eimer appears to have commenced his studies upon 
reptiles, and more especially upon lizards. In their mani- 
fold and seemingly arbitrary designs he has traced a stridl 
regularity. The patterns in question are reducible to three 
fundamental forms — longitudinal stripes, transverse stripes, 
and spots. The first-mentioned of these three styles he 
considers as the primitive form, from which the two others 
have been developed by transformation, and are still under- 
going changes. There are a certain number of such longi- 
tudinal stripes, occupying normal positions, and appearing 
as the original rudimentary starting-point of all colouration. 
On every hand we find species which still display this 
primitive type of simple longitudinal striping. Others are 
spotted, and others “ tigrated ” (Herr Eimer’s convenient 
V©L. V. (THIRD SERIES.) 2 T 
