58 J@ The Secret Lfe of Naturethough a bare hundred miles away in Holland hardly a one was to be
seen.Yet the same mannilun could be found in Massachusetts and on the
banks of the Niagara River. On the vast plains of the Dakotas, Leadbeater
says he spotted black-and-white manniluns not seen elsewhere, whereas
California could boast of a unique white-and-gold species.
Remarking on the diversity of nature spirits in the Australian
provinces of New South Wales, Victoria, and tropical Northern
Queensland, Leadbeater found the most frequent type encountered
was a distinctive creature of "a wonderful luminous sky-blue color."
In Java he found the most common to be two distinct types, both
monochromatic, "one indigo blue with faint metallic gleanings, the
other a study in all known shades of yellow-quaint, but wonderfully
effective and attractive." Another local variety was gaudily ringed, like
a soccer jersey, with alternate bars of green and yellow. In the Malay
Peninsula he found creatures with similar outfits, only striped red and
yellow, and on the other side of the Straits of Sumatra, green-and-
white ones.
On the great island of Sumatra, Leadbeater found a pale heliotrope
tribe that he had seen only in the hills of Ceylon. And down in New
Zealand he found the specialty to be a deep blue, shot with silver,
whereas in the South Sea Islands he ran into a silvery white variety
"which coruscates with all the colors of the rainbow, like a figure of
mother-of-pearl."
Traveling in India, Leadbeater found all sorts of manniluns, from the
delicate rose-and-pale-green type or the pale-blue-and-primrose vari-
ety of the hill country to the rich medley of "gorgeously gleaming col-
ors, almost barbaric in their intensity and profusion," characteristic of
the plains. The subcontinent also harbored the black-and-gold type
more often associated with the African desert as well as a species re-
sembling "a statuette made out of a gleaming crimson metal, such as
was the orichalcum of the Atlanteans."
In the immediate neighborhood of volcanic disturbances, such as
on the slopes of Vesuvius and Etna or in the interior ofJava or on the
Sandwich Islands or even inYellowstone Park in North America or on
the North Island of New Zealand, Leadbeater consistently found a cu-