Alfred Russel Wallace

“ The air, the earth, the undergrowth, the tree-trunks, the flowers, and the fruits, all support their specially adapted tribes of birds. Each species fills a place in nature, and can only continue to exist so long as that place is open to it; and each has become what it is in every detail of form, size, structure, and even of colour, because it has inherited through countless ancestral forms all those variations which have best adapted it among its fellows to fill that place, and to leave behind it equally well adapted successors. ”

“ The equatorial regions are then, as regards their past and present life history, a more ancient world than that represented by the temperate zones, a world in which the laws which have governed the progressive development of life have operated with comparatively little check for countless ages, and have resulted in those infinitely varied and beautiful forms—those wonderful eccentricities of structure, of function, and of instinct—that rich variety of colour, and that nicely balanced harmony of relations—which delight and astonish us in the animal productions of all tropical countries. ”

“ The first sight of the great blue Morphos flapping slowly along in the forest roads near Para—of the large, white-and-black semi-transparent Ideas floating airily about in the woods near Malacca—and of the golden-green Ornithopteras sailing on bird-like wing over the flowering shrubs which adorn the beach of the Ké and Aru islands, can never be forgotten by any one with a feeling of admiration for the new and beautiful in nature. Next to the size, the infinitely varied and dazzling hues of these insects most attract the observer. ”

“ A fine clump of large bamboos is perhaps the most graceful of all vegetable forms, resembling the light and airy plumes of the bird-of-paradise copied on a gigantic scale in living foliage. Such clumps are often eighty or a hundred feet high, the glossy stems, perhaps six inches thick at the base, springing up at first straight as an arrow, tapering gradually to a slender point, and bending over in elegant curves with the weight of the slender branches and grassy leaves. The various species differ greatly in size and proportions ”

“ It is never either spring, summer, or autumn, but each day is a combination of all three. With the day and night always of equal length, the atmospheric disturbances of each day neutralising themselves before each succeeding morn; with the sun in its course proceeding midway across the sky, and the daily temperature almost the same throughout the year—how grand in its perfect equilibrium and simplicity is the march of Nature under the equator! ”

“ The primeval forests of the equatorial zone are grand and overwhelming by their vastness, and by the display of a force of development and vigour of growth rarely or never witnessed in temperate climates. Among their best distinguishing features are the variety of forms and species which everywhere meet and grow side by side, and the extent to which parasites, epiphytes, and creepers fill up every available station with peculiar modes of life. If the traveller notices a particular species and wishes to find more like it, he may often turn his eyes in vain in every direction. ”

“ An extensive survey of the organic world thus leads us to the conclusion that colour is by no means so unimportant or inconstant a character as at first sight it appears to be; and the more we examine it the more convinced we shall become that it must serve some purpose in nature, and that, besides charming us by its diversity and beauty, it must be well worthy of our attentive study, and have many secrets to unfold to us. ”

“ The solution of these and a hundred other problems of like nature was rarely approached by the old method of study, or if approached was only the subject of vague speculation. It is to the illustrious author of the Origin of Species that we are indebted for teaching us how to study nature as one great, compact, and beautifully-adjusted system. Under the touch of his magic wand the countless isolated facts of internal and external structure of living things—their habits, their colours, their development, their distribution, their geological history,—all fell into their approximate places ”

“ Flowers, insects and birds, are the organisms most generally ornamented in this way; and their symmetry of form, their variety of structure, and the lavish abundance with which they clothe and enliven the earth, cause them to be objects of universal admiration. The relation of this wealth of colour to our mental and moral nature is indisputable. The child and the savage alike admire the gay tints of flower, bird, and insect; while to many of us their contemplation brings a solace and enjoyment which is both intellectually, and morally beneficial. ”

“ Our red haws and hips, our black elderberries, our blue sloes, and whortleberries, our white mistletoe and snowberry, and our orange sea-buckthorn, are examples of the colour-sign of edibility; and in every part of the world the same phenomenon is found. ”

“ Sometimes in the midst of the stillness, a sudden yell or scream will startle one; this comes from some defenceless fruit-eating animal which is pounced upon by a tiger-cat or a boa-constrictor. Morning and evening the howling monkeys make a most fearful and harrowing noise, under which it is difficult to keep up one’s buoyancy of spirit. The feeling of inhospitable wildness which the forest is calculated to inspire, is increased tenfold under this fearful uproar. ”

“ So great is the alteration effected in our comprehension of nature by the study of variation, inheritance, cross-breeding, competition, distribution, protection, and selection—showing, as they often do, the meaning of the most obscure phenomena and the mutual dependence of the most widely-separated organisms—that it can only be fitly compared with the analogous alteration produced in our conception of the universe by Newton’s grand discovery of the law of gravitation. ”

“ The huntsman would be disappointed who expected to find here flocks of animals similar to the buffalo-herds of North America, or the swarms of antelopes and herds of ponderous pachyderms of Southern Africa. We often read in books of travel of the silence and gloom of the Brazilian forests. They are realities, and the impression deepens on a longer acquaintance. The few sounds of birds are of that pensive and mysterious character which intensifies the feeling of solitude rather than imparts a sense of life and cheerfulness. ”

“ Looking down on the dark back of a fish it is almost invisible, while, to an enemy looking up from below, the light under-surface would be equally invisible against the light of the clouds and sky. Again, the gorgeous colours of the butterflies which inhabit the depths of tropical forests bear no relation to the kind of light that falls upon them, coming as it does almost wholly from green foliage, dark brown soil, or blue sky ”

“ According to modern theories, the higher civilisation is ever a growth and an outcome from a preceding lower state; and it is inferred that this progress is visible to us throughout all history and in all material records of human intellect. But here we have a building which marks the very dawn of history, which is the oldest authentic monument of man’s genius and skill, and which, instead of being far inferior, is very much superior to all which followed it. ”

“ Now just as a surface-geology was required to complete that science, so a surface-biology was wanted to make the science of living things more complete and more generally interesting, by applying the results arrived at by special workers to the interpretation of those external and prominent features whose endless variety and beauty constitute the charm which attracts us to the contemplation or to the study of nature. ”

“ The growth of [p. 38] climbers, even more than all other plants, is upward towards the light. In the shade of the forest they rarely or never flower, and seldom even produce foliage; but when they have reached the summit of the tree that supports them, they expand under the genial influence of light and air, and often cover their foster-parent with blossoms not its own. Here, as a rule, the climber’s growth would cease; but the time comes when the supporting tree rots and falls, and the creeper comes with it in torn and tangled masses to the ground. ”

“ Theory of Typical Colours.—The remaining kinds of animal colours, those which can neither be classed as protective, warning, or sexual, are for the most part readily explained on the general principles of the development of colour which we have now laid down. It is a most suggestive fact, that, in cases where colour is required only as a warning, as among the uneatable caterpillars, we find, not one or two glaring tints only, but every kind of colour disposed in elegant patterns, and exhibiting almost as much variety and beauty as among insects and birds. ”

“ Thus the arctic ducks and divers are handsomer than those of the tropical zone; while the king-duck of temperate America and the mandarin-duck of North China are the most beautifully coloured of the whole family. ”

“ The complex laws and unexpected relations which we have seen to be involved in the production of the special colours of flower, bird, and insect, must give them an additional interest for every thoughtful mind; while the knowledge that, in all probability, each style of coloration, and sometimes the smallest details, have a meaning and a use, must add a new charm to the study of nature. ”

“ The range of subjects comprehended within the domain of Biology is so wide, and my own acquaintance with them so imperfect, that it is not in my power to lay before you any general outline of the recent progress of the biological sciences. Neither do I feel competent to give you a summary of the present status of any one of the great divisions of our science, such as Anatomy, Physiology, Embryology, Histology, Classification, or Evolution—Philology, Ethnology, or Prehistoric Archæology ”

“ Bamboos.—The gigantic grasses called bamboos can hardly be classed as typical plants of the tropical zone, because they appear to be absent from the entire African continent and are comparatively scarce in South America. They also extend beyond the geographical tropics in China and Japan as well as in Northern India. It is however within the tropics and towards the equator that they attain their full size and beauty, and it is here that the species are most numerous and offer that variety of form, size, and quality, which renders them so admirable a boon to man. ”

“ Every form of vegetation has become alike adapted to its genial heat and ample moisture, which has probably changed little even throughout geological periods; and the never-ceasing struggle for existence between the various species in the same area has resulted in a nice balance of organic forces, which gives the advantage, now to one, now to another, species, and prevents any one type of vegetation from monopolising territory to the exclusion of the rest. ”

“ The larger wingless stick-insects are often eight inches to a foot long. They are abundant in the Moluccas; hanging on the shrubs that line the forest-paths; and they resemble sticks so exactly, in colour, in the small rugosities of the bark, in the knots and small branches, imitated by the joints of the legs, which are either pressed close to the body, or stuck out at random, that it is absolutely impossible, by the eye alone, to distinguish the real dead twigs which fall down from the trees overhead from the living insects. ”

“ The flowers are not individually large, but form large spikes or racemes, and the fruits are often beautifully scaled and hang in huge bunches which are sometimes more than a load for a strong man. The climbing palms are very remarkable, their tough, slender, prickly stems mounting up by means of the hooked midribs of the leaves to the tops of the loftiest forest-trees, above which they send up an elegant spike of foliage and flowers. ”

“ In the forests all trees, and shrubs, and creepers struggle upwards to the light, there to expand their blossoms and ripen their fruit. Hence, perhaps, the abundance of climbers which make use of their more sturdy companions to reach this necessary of vegetable [p. 64] life. Yet even on the upper surface of the forest, fully exposed to the light and heat of the tropical sun, there is no special development of coloured flowers. When from some elevated point you can gaze down upon an unbroken expanse of woody vegetation, it often happens that not a single patch of bright colour can be discerned. ”

“ The very frequent superiority of the male bird or insect in brightness or intensity of colour, even when the general coloration is the same in both sexes, now seems to me to be, primarily, due to the greater vigour and activity and the higher vitality of the male. The colours of an animal usually fade during disease or weakness, while robust health and vigour adds to their intensity. ”

“ He shows, by a careful comparison of all parts of the structure of the body, that man is related not to any one, but almost equally to many of the existing apes—to the orang, the chimpanzee, the gorilla, and even to the gibbons—in a variety of ways; and these relations and differences are so numerous and so diverse that, on the theory of evolution, the ancestral form which ultimately developed into man must have diverged from the common stock whence all these various forms and their extinct allies originated. ”

“ Now, even admitting this criticism to be well founded—and I myself believe that to a limited extent it is so—I nevertheless maintain that Darwin is not and cannot be too highly rated; for his greatness does not at all depend upon his being infallible, but on his having developed, with rare patience and judgment, a new system of observation and study, guided by certain general principles which are almost as simple as gravitation and as wide-reaching in their effects. ”

“ We have here a physical cause for the sense-inferiority of totally white animals which may account for their rarity in nature; for few, if any, wild animals are wholly white. The head, the face, or at least the muzzle or the nose, are generally black; the ears and eyes are also often black; and there is reason to believe that dark pigment is essential to good hearing, as it certainly is to perfect vision. We can therefore understand why white cats with blue eyes are so often deaf, a peculiarity we notice more readily than their deficiency of smell or taste. ”