Page:Darwinism by Alfred Wallace 1889.djvu/211

Rh are the colours of soap-bubbles, or of steel or glass on which extremely fine lines have been ruled; and these colours often produce the effect of metallic lustre, and are the cause of most of the metallic hues of birds and insects.

As colour thus depends on molecular or chemical constitution or on the minute surface texture of bodies, and, as the matter of which organic beings are composed consists of chemical compounds of great complexity and extreme instability, and is also subject to innumerable changes during growth and development, we might naturally expect the phenomena of colour to be more varied here than in less complex and more stable compounds. Yet even in the inorganic world we find abundant and varied colours; in the earth and in the water; in metals, gems, and minerals; in the sky and in the ocean; in sunset clouds and in the many-tinted rainbow. Here we can have no question of use to the coloured object, and almost as little perhaps in the vivid red of blood, in the brilliant colours of red snow and other low algæ and fungi, or even in the universal mantle of green which clothes so large a portion of the earth's surface. The presence of some colour, or even of many brilliant colours, in animals and plants would require no other explanation than does that of the sky or the ocean, of the ruby or the emerald—that is, it would require a purely physical explanation only. It is the wonderful individuality of the colours of animals and plants that attracts our attention—the fact that the colours are localised in definite patterns, sometimes in accordance with structural characters, sometimes altogether independent of them; while often differing in the most striking and fantastic manner in allied species. We are thus compelled to look upon colour not merely as a physical but also as a biological characteristic, which has been differentiated and specialised by natural selection, and must, therefore, find its explanation in the principle of adaptation or utility.

That the colours and markings of animals have been acquired under the fundamental law of utility is indicated by a general fact which has received very little attention. As a rule, colour and marking are constant in each species of wild animal, while, in almost every domesticated animal, there arises