1878J Colouration of the Organic World. 39 
would be doubtless modified. As the inserts of warm 
climates, also, are upon the whole larger than those of our 
hyperborean latitudes, they necessarily attract attention, 
and their beauty does not pass unseen ; yet every entomolo- 
gist knows that even in Britain we possess “ tiny miracles 
of Nature ” which, if viewed with a lens of low power, dis- 
play a splendour little — if at all — inferior to the most richly 
attired tropical species. We will merely mention, as in- 
stances, Chryseis ignita , Chrysomela cerealis , Donacia proteus , 
Polydrusus micans and flavipes , Rhynchites betulcz and populi , 
Lampm rutilans , and Anthraxia salicis . Calosoma sycophanta, 
also, if very rare in Britain, is very common in certain parts 
of Central Europe, and may be fairly considered one of the 
most gorgeous species of the entire family of Carabidse to 
be met with in any part of the world. 
The case, then, seems to stand thus : — We have in Britain 
certain species, small, and it may be rare, which display the 
very same shades of colour and the same brilliance as we 
find in the most admired forms of tropical life. This faCt 
seems to us scarcely consistent with the theory that the 
more intense light of low latitudes is a prominent faCtor in 
the production of splendid colours. Were such the case 
gaily-coloured species in our climate would not merely 
be fewer and smaller ; they would rather be altogether 
wanting. 
Again, different portions of the torrid zone differ very 
widely as regards the number, and even the beauty, of the 
richly-attired birds and inseCts they produce. Thus, as 
Mr. Wallace has pointed out, in New Guinea 50 per cent of 
the birds are brilliantly coloured, whilst in the Malay Islands 
and in the Valley of the Amazon the proportion does not 
exceed 33 per cent. Can this distinction be rationally 
ascribed to any excess of light enjoyed by New Guinea over 
and above the amount received by the Valley of the 
Amazon ? Both these respective districts lie under the 
Equator; both are fruitful, plentifully supplied with moisture, 
well-wooded, and exposed — as far as we can perceive — to 
very similar meteorological conditions. But if excess of light 
cannot be the cause of the superiority of New Guinea over 
equinoctial Brazil, why should it be put forward to explain 
the superiority of Brazil as compared with Britain ? Why 
should the fauna of the Philippine Islands, as is remarked 
by Mr. Wallace in his invaluable “ Glasgow Address,” be so 
rich in species of exceptionally splendid colours ? Can 
there be in those islands either any excess in the quantity 
or any peculiarity in the quality of the sunlight ? That 
