Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VIII. THE COMMUNITY OF TASTE BETWEEN FLOWER-FEEDING AND FRUIT-EATING SPECIES. Before we proceed to consider the secondary reactions of the colour-sense in insects and vertebrates upon their own external appearance, we must glance for a moment at one of the determining causes which give approximate unifor-mity to the general results of such reactions in the animals with which we are most specially concerned. In the next chapter we shall have to examine the production of bright hues in the wings of butterflies, the skins of lizards, the feathers of birds, and the fur of mammals, due to the selective action of sexual preferences. But, as a necessary preliminary to that inquiry, we must first set ourselves to determine the principles which govern the formation of tastes generally among the flower-feeding and fruit-eating animals. Before we can trace to its final effects the action of a sexual preference for bright colouring, we must pre-viously find out with certainty the reasons why a taste for such colouring should exist at all in the animal con-sciousness. People are generally too apt to accept as ultimate and obvious every fact with which they have always been familiar. Seeing that bright colours as a rule attract children and savages, dogs, birds, fish, and insects, they do not trouble themselves to seek a reason for this preference, but take it for granted as an inherent and natural property of the animal organism, or, more often and more absurdly still, of the colours themselves. If, however, we r reflect upon the subject for a moment, we shall see that there is no primitive and self-sufficing reason in the nature of things why any one colour should be more beautiful to us than another. Dull and dingy hues might...
