PATTERNS ON LIVING ANIMALS 
3i 
demands on the mind, is by no means a common 
form of natural decoration in the higher animals. 
Contrasts of brilliant colours, as in the plumage of the 
birds of paradise, and of the parrots and lorys, are the 
usual and beautiful adornments of birds. Any visitor 
to the cases of a good natural history collection, will 
find a hundred instances of this form of decoration for 
one of true pattern. Even the wings of butterflies, 
though spangled with colours in dots, lines, and spots, 
are usually devoid of pattern, though the juxtaposition 
of a number of the same species would instantly pro- 
duce the effect of pattern. But that effect, so far as 
it is given in a single individual, is, as a rule, only due 
to the fact that the creature is itself symmetrical, and 
that the lines and markings on one side of the body 
are repeated upon the other. The stripes upon a 
tiger’s skin, for instance, though in the nature of orna- 
ment, are not a pattern, though a number of tigers’ 
skins laid side by side might produce to the eye the 
effect of pattern. The patterns themselves are also 
few in number ; and these limited and favourite forms 
of enrichment are applied indiscriminately, and with a 
certain indifference to congruity of species, yet with 
unfailing success in the result, to the most widely 
different forms in the animal creation. Take, for 
example, the most complex, and perhaps the most 
beautiful of all, natural ornaments, which appears in 
the “ eyes” in the peacock’s tail. The same pattern, 
with slight variations, is found, not only on the feathers 
of the beautiful grouse-like Polyplectron of Malacca, 
