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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



gcther last October, how early this love for regu- 

 lar patterns appeared among mankind, and how 

 large a share it bore in the evolution of aesthetic 

 taste. Derived originally from the contemplation 

 of the organic world, it has reacted at last upon 

 our perceptions of organisms themselves. From 

 the tattooing and carving of the savage ; from 

 the paddles, the bowls, and the clubs, of early 

 chieftains ; from the Greek temples, and urns, 

 and key.patterns ; from the Eoman arch and am- 

 phitheatre and tessellated pavement ; from the 

 Gothic rose-window, and sedilia, and screen ; 

 from obelisk, and column, and monument ; from 

 every vase, basin, table, plate, dish, carpet, wall- 

 paper, and decorative device generally, through- 

 out all time, savage, barbarous, or civilized, we 

 have learned to expect symmetry and regularity, 

 and to feel a pleasure at their due occurrence. 

 And, as I look at this little daisy in my hand, I 

 recognize in it the possession of those attributes 

 which concur with its color to make me call it 

 pretty. 



I take the daisy in my fingers and pull out 

 one of the pink-tipped rays. As I inspect it 

 closely, I see that it forms a perfect but very ir- 

 regular floret. Our daisy, then, is a composite 

 plant, and this which looks a single blossom is 

 in reality a thick-set head of lovely little bells. 

 Gaze hard into the central mass, and you will 

 see them clustered thickly together, each with a 

 yellow fringe, shaped like a Canterbury bell, 

 within which lie the stamens and pistil, scarcely 

 visible without the aid of a lens. In the very 

 heart of the flower, each tiny floret is still un- 

 opened — in the bud, so to speak — and they stand 

 like little golden knobs, too small to count with 

 the naked eye. Toward the circumference, how- 

 ever, the separate bells are fully opened, and, if 

 you will take the trouble to look hard enough, 

 you will see that they are perfect miniature flow- 

 ers, every one having a deeply-cleft corolla, which 

 forms a bright-ye'flow tube with five projecting, 

 vandyked points. The outer florets of all are 

 the pinky-white rays which first attracted our 

 attention, and, when I look at one of them by 

 itself, I can see that it is a marvelously mis- 

 shapen representative of the little inner bells. Its 

 corolla has grown together into a single, one- 

 sided leaflet, in which we can scarcely distinguish 

 a trace of the original petals, four or five in num- 

 ber, answering to the vandyked points of the 

 internal bells. Its color has been entirely blanched, 

 while at the outer extremity it has been dyed with 

 a melting shade of delicate pink. Its stamens 

 have disappeared altogether, but the pistil still 



remains as in the central blossoms. My scientific 

 teachers have taught me to recognize in this 

 arrangement the joint effect of incident sunlight, 

 freer elbow-room, and natural selection. Most 

 of the daisy-shaped composites have an outer 

 row of radial florets, to give size, color, and at- 

 tractiveness to the blossom, and to allure those 

 great fertilizing agents, the bees and the butter- 

 flies ; while the real working organs, the golden 

 bells, lie thickly packed together in the middle, 

 and take a comparatively passive part in the task 

 of fascinating the insect-eye. But at present, 

 when my purpose is purely aesthetic, I must neg- 

 lect these interesting biological speculations and 

 return to my analysis of a daisy, viewed as a 

 beautiful object alone. 



What a new sphere of aesthetic pleasure this 

 discovery, that the daisy is composite, has laid 

 open before us ! I was just beginning to tire of 

 its pinky rays and its yellow centre, my inter- 

 est in its various parts was just b eginning to 

 flag, when suddenly I find a whole unthought-of 

 region disclosed to my delighted view. I can sit 

 and look at it now, and have full occupation for 

 my intellect at least ten minutes longer. In the 

 case of our cocoanut we saw already how large 

 an element of aesthetic pleasure is given us in 

 the intellectual interest and the sensuous gratifi- 

 cation of numerous visual, salient points. If we 

 look at a book of engravings, and turn over the 

 pages in rapid listlessness, it is clear that we are 

 not receiving very much pleasure from their con- 

 tents ; but if we linger for ten minutes over a 

 single plate, marking every detail and taking in 

 every figure, the inference is strong that we are 

 thoroughly enjoying our occupation. 



Yet such enjoyment is not always of necessity 

 aesthetic in kind. If I had never seen a daisy 

 before, and were pulling it to pieces for the pur- 

 pose of settling its botanical affinities, my inter- 

 est, though strong, would be purely scientific. I 

 should not be concentrating my attention on 

 its color and its symmetry, but rather noticing 

 trivial and sensuously dull traits in its internal 

 economy, reduced to botanical rule and number. 

 I should not be thinking of it in such poetical 

 terms as golden bells and pink-tipped rays, but 

 in the cut-and-dried phraseology of natural sci- 

 ence : " Inner florets, bisexual, regular, of five 

 yellow petals, combined into a tubular corolla ; 

 stamens four to five, anthers combined ; pistil 

 with one cell, one style, and two stigmas," and 

 much more to the same technical effect. In all 

 this process, the sense of laborious investigation 

 and toilsome straining of the eye and the intel- 



