COLOUR EFFECTS

A favourite food of the great green, gold and black butterfly (ORNITHOPTERA Cassandra) is the nectar of the hard, dull-red flowers of the umbrella-tree, and this fact assisted in an observation which seems to prove that plants play tricks on insects.  Among the introduced plants of the island is one of the acalyphas.  Butterflies which have feasted among the umbrella-trees on the beach and on the edge of the jungle flit about the garden and almost invariably visit the red but nectarless acalypha.  One began at the end of the row, examined the topmost leaves, flitted to the next, and so on, lured by the colour and disappointed by the absence of nectar, twenty-five times, in succession, until it blundered on the red hibiscus bushes and began to feed.

The gorgeous blue swallow-tail (PAPILIO Ulysses) seems to have a fancy for yellow, for it pays frequent visits to the golden trumpets of the tecoma and the alamanda.  The living gold of the flowers and the imperial blue of the insect form a sumptuous if everyday scene.

MUSICAL FROGS

A marked feature of the wet season is the varied chant of happy frogs.  During the day silence is the rule.  A low gurgle of content at the sounding rain is occasionally heard on the part of a flabby, moist creature unable to restrain its sentiments until the approach of evening.  But as the sun sets, each of the countless host utters a song of thankfulness and pleasure.  To the unappreciative it may appear merely an inharmonious vocal go-as-you-please, in which each frog is the embodiment of the idea that upon its jubilant efforts the honour and reputation of the race as vocalists depend.  But to one class of listener the opera is decently if not scientifically constituted.  There is the loud and cheerful, if not shrill, bleating of the soprano, the strenuous booming of the bass, the velvety softness and depth of the contralto and the thin high tenor.  Hordes of the alert, sharp-featured, far-leaping grass frog represent the chorus, and they have a perfectly rehearsed theme.  Down on the flat along the edge of the pandanus grove the preliminary chords are uttered—­a merry, unreflective, chirrupy strain, gay as “the Fishermen’s Chorus.”  The motive is taken up nearer among the coco-nuts, and is in full swing in the pools below the terrace.  Thence the sound passes on through the wattles and bloodwoods to the narrow tea-tree swamp lined with dwarf bamboos and dies in echoes in the distance.  A brief interlude, and the pandanus choir gives voice again, stronger and resonant; the companions of the coco-nuts join lustily, the strain reverberates from the wet lands below, resounds through the forest, and is lost in the mellow distance of the tea-trees.  And so the sound rises and falls, swells and dwindles away in chords and harmonies, until presently every amphibian is alert and tremulous with emotion and emulation.  If an attempt is made to analyse the music, you may discover sounds sharp as those of the fife, deep and hollow as drum-beats, sonorous and acrid, tinny and mellow.