Page:Darwinism by Alfred Wallace 1889.djvu/358

 are more gorgeous than some of the tiger-beetles and the carabi, yet these are all carnivorous; while many of the most brilliant metallic buprestidae and longicorns are always found on the bark of fallen trees. So with the humming-birds; their brilliant metallic tints can only be compared with metals or gems, and are totally unlike the delicate pinks and purples, yellows and reds of the majority of flowers. Again, the Australian honey-suckers (Meliphagidae) are genuine flower-haunters, and the Australian flora is more brilliant in colour display than that of most tropical regions, yet these birds are, as a rule, of dull colours, not superior on the average to our grain-eating finches. Then, again, we have the grand pheasant family, including the gold and the silver pheasants, the gorgeous fire-backed and ocellated pheasants, and the resplendent peacock, all feeding on the ground on grain or seeds or insects, yet adorned with the most gorgeous colours.

There is, therefore, no adequate basis of facts for this theory to rest upon, even if there were the slightest reason to believe that not only birds, but butterflies and beetles, take any delight in colour for its own sake, apart from the food-supply of which it indicates the presence. All that has been proved or that appears to be probable is, that they are able to perceive differences of colour, and to associate each colour with the particular flowers or fruits which best satisfy their wants. Colour being in its nature diverse, it has been beneficial for them to be able to distinguish all its chief varieties, as manifested more particularly in the vegetable kingdom, and among the different species of their own group; and the fact that certain species of insects show some preference for a particular colour may be explained by their having found flowers of that colour to yield them a more abundant supply of nectar or of pollen. In those cases in which butterflies frequent flowers of their own colour, the habit may well have been acquired from the protection it affords them.

It appears to me that, in imputing to insects and birds the same love of colour for its own sake and the same aesthetic tastes as we ourselves possess, we may be as far from the truth as were those writers who held that the bee was a good mathematician, and that the honeycomb was constructed throughout to satisfy its refined mathematical instincts; whereas it is now