Gold And Orange, Red, Bright Scarlet, And
Ruby And Bronze In The Flies.
Dark velvet, brown velvet, greys, amber,
and gold edgings like military coats in the wild bees.
If fifteen or
twenty delicate plates of the thinnest possible material, each tinted
differently, were placed one over the other, and all translucent, perhaps
they might produce something of that singular shadow-painting seen on the
wings of moths. They are the shadows of the colours, and yet they are
equally distinct. The thin edges of the flies' wings catch the sunbeams,
and throw them aside. Look, too, at the bees' limbs, which are sometimes
yellow, and sometimes orange-red with pollen. The eyes, too, of many
insects are coloured. They know your shadow from that of a cloud. If a
cloud comes over, the instant the edge of the shadow reaches the Grass
moths they stop, so do some of the butterflies and other insects, as the
wild bees remain quiescent. As the edge of your shadow falls on them they
rise and fly, so that to observe them closely it must not be allowed to
overlap them.
Sometimes I think insects smell the approaching observer as the deer wind
the stalker. The Gatekeeper butterfly is common; its marking is very
ingenious, may I say? regular, and yet irregular. The pattern is
complete, and yet it is incomplete; it is finished, and yet it suggests
to the mind that the lines ought to go on farther. They go out into space
beyond the wing.
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