As like phenomena of colour characterize certain groups of living creatures, so also like phenomena of colour may characterize certain geographical regions being common to creatures of very different kinds which inhabit such regions, as we shall hereafter see. The brightest of living things, the humming birds, have their true home in the equatorial region of America, to which continent they are exclusively confined. But it is in the equatorial region of the whole earth that we find the most brilliant birds of other kinds, the most brightly coloured reptiles and fishes, the largest and many of the loveliest butterflies, moths and beetles, the most beautiful orchids, the largest of all flowers and of all clusters of flowers. But neither the temperate, nor even the Arctic nor Antarctic climes are denied the glory of bright tints in the long days of their brief, but sometimes fervid, summer. Indeed, the golden burst of gorse and glow of heather in our temperate zone have, in their way, an unequal charm; while every here and there Arctic lands and Alpine heights exhibit beauties of colour which are hardly elsewhere presented by the field of animated nature to the eye of man. ST. GEORGE MIVART. FOOTNOTES: [56] CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for July, 1879, p. 678. [57] Loc. cit., p. 704. [58] CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for July, 1879, p. 703. [59] _Ibid._ for September, 1879, p. 27. [60] CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, September, 1879, pp. 33 and 43. [61] One of the _Melanospermeæ_; _Ibid._ p. 36. [62] Creatures belonging to the class _Lammellibranchiata_; see CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, September, 1879, pp. 30 and 43. [63] The truffle may be generally regarded rather as the fruit of a plant than as an entire plant, and yet in some of the group the rest of the plant (which is called the _Mycelium_) is quite rudimentary, or even absent. [64] There are climbers in Brazil, the roots of which, descending around the trunk of the tree supporting them, clasp the latter with such a deadly embrace that it dies and decays. In the meantime, the descending roots (having become fixed in the ground) swell and meet so as to form a new and irregularly-shaped trunk of solid wood, which has thus (by an inverted process) grown downwards instead of upwards. There are other such creepers in the East which have a wide-spreading downward growth (see Wallace's "Malay Archipelago," vol. i. p. 131). [65] Creatures belonging to the group _Rhizopoda_; see CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for September, 1879, pp. 35 and 43. [66] One of the lowest of the _Rhizopoda_; _Ibid._ p. 36. [67] A class of _Hypozoa_; see CONTEMPORARY REVIEW for September, 1879, pp. 35 and 43. [68] _Ibid._ pp. 31 and 43. [69] _Ibid._ p. 35, and _Archiv für Mikroskop. Anatomie_, vol. xv. Heft 3, plate xx. [70] See CONTEMPORARY REVIEW, September, 1879, p. 31. [71] One of the _Copepoda_; see loc. cit., p. 31. [72] See loc. cit., p. 31. [73] Of the class _Cestoidea_; see loc. cit., pp. 34 and 43. [74] Loc. cit., p. 36.