Animal behavior; Animals -- Color; Plants -- Color
In thinking over this obscure subject, the opinion has steadily gathered
strength that form and colour are closely allied; for form is essential
to pattern; and colour without pattern, that is to say, colour
indefinitely marked, or distributed, is hardly decoration at all, in the
sense we are using the term. That many animals possess the power of
discriminating form is certain. Deformed or monstrous forms are driven
from the herds and packs of such social animals as cattle, deer, and
hogs, and maimed individuals are destroyed. Similar facts have been
noticed in the case of birds. This shows a power of recognising any
departure from the standard of form, just as the remorseless destruction
of abnormally coloured birds, such as white or piebald rooks and
blackbirds, by their fellows, is proof of the recognition and dislike of
a departure from normal colouring. Authentic anecdotes of dogs
recognising their masters' portraits are on record; and in West Suffolk,
of late years, a zinc, homely representation of a cat has been found
useful in protecting garden produce from the ravages of birds. In this
latter case the birds soon found out the innocent nature of the fraud,
for we have noticed, after a fortnight, the amusing sight of sparrows
cleaning their beaks on the whilom object of terror. Many fish are
deceived with artificial bait, as the pike, with silvered minnows; the
salmon, and trout, with artificial flies; the glitter of the spoon-bait
is often most attractive; and mackerel take greedily to bits of red
flannel. Bees sometimes mistake artificial for real flowers; and both
they and butterflies have been known to seek vainly for nourishment
from the gaudy painted flowers on cottage wall-papers. Sir John Lubbock
has demonstrated the existence of a colour sense in bees, wasps, and
ants; and the great fact that flowers are lures for insects proves
beyond the power of doubt that these creatures have a very strong
faculty for perceiving colour.
The pale yellows and white of night-flowering plants render them
conspicuous to the flower-haunting moths; and no one who has ever used
an entomologist's lantern, or watched a daddy-long-legs (_Tipula_)
dancing madly round a candle, can fail to see that intense excitement is
caused by the flame. In the dim shades of night the faint light of the
flowers tells the insects of the land of plenty, and the stimulus thus
excited is multiplied into a frenzy by the glow of a lamp, which,
doubtless, seems to insect eyes the promise of a feast that shall
transcend that of ordinary flowers, as a Lord Mayor's feast transcends a
homely crust of bread and cheese.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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