DISSECTING A DAISY. 



335 



about in our feelings during the evolution of 

 civilization. A savage does not care much for 

 flowers : they are bright and pretty enough, but, 

 if he picks them, they fade in half an hour. Give 

 him a few pieces of red and blue cloth or glass, 

 similarly dyed, and he infinitely prefers them to 

 the handiwork of Natm-e. He would consider 

 the milliner's daisy ever so much prettier than 

 the living flower. The vulgar among ourselves 

 think a bunch of wax or paper flowers beautiful 

 ornaments for a sitting-room table, more lasting 

 and so more desirable than an actual bouquet ; 

 whereas, with more refined natures, the feeling of 

 artificiality spoils the one, and the sense of reality 

 gives the other loveliness. A great many threads 

 of feeling go to make up this complex mental 

 state. 



For one thing, the texture and composition of 

 the two are quite different. The daisy's leaves 

 are soft and smooth and delicate, while the imita- 

 tion is hard and glazed and coarse-grained. The 

 daisy will bear looking into, and the closer we 

 look the more beauty do we discover ; but the 

 artificial flower is all made up of wires and twisted 

 rag, which disclose their ugly workmanship when 

 we scrutinize them too curiously. The daisy's 

 pigment is diffused within its cells like the native 

 roses of a maiden's cheek ; but the pink of the 

 milliner's flowers is smeared on outside like the 

 rouge and pearl-powder of a vulgar actress. We, 

 who are accustomed to manufactured goods, have 

 learned to discriminate between the coarse handi- 

 work of man and the dainty devices of Nature. 

 We recognize the difference between the micro- 

 scopic cells of a real leaf and the twisted fibres 

 of a calico petal. Sometimes a false begonia or 

 coleus on a London landing deceives us for a mo- 

 ment, but, so soon as we discover by the touch its 

 artificial character, all feeling of beauty is gone in 

 a moment. It is the freshness, the smoothness, 

 the delicate texture, the living flower, which we 

 love, as well as the mere brightness, and color, and 

 form. 



Again, in our adult minds the very fragility and 

 short-livedness of the real daisy give it a certain 

 poetical interest. We like it the better for being 

 so frail. We don't care for that tough calico thing, 

 with knobs of yellow composition, which will stand 

 any amount of knocking about. We would rather 

 have a live daisy, whose little leaves will shrink 

 and die at any exposure or rough treatment. 



Furthermore, the daisy is not merely a natu- 

 ral object and a living thing, but it is yet more 

 specifically a flower. Our sentiment toward it is 

 not at all the same as that which we entertain 



with regard to a bird or a butterfly. With them, 

 the consciousness of animal life, of pleasurable 

 existence, occupies the foreground of our mental 

 picture. We think of t'nem as happy and joyous 

 and free ; we watch them with delight as the one 

 cleaves the unresisting air in rapid motion, and 

 the other flits fairy-like from blossom to blos- 

 som, sucking the honey from their perfumed 

 depths. A stuffed bird or a dried butterfly in a 

 cabinet does not affect us with the like gladsome 

 sentiments. The color and form are still the 

 same, but the life and the joy are wanting to fill 

 in the measure of our sympathetic delight. A 

 flower, however, rests its claims on totally differ- 

 ent grounds. Dim recollections of childhood, 

 vague echoes of pleasure felt by generations long 

 dead, whose experience yet reverberates through 

 our brains by the mystic transmission of heredity 

 — these give to the flower, insentient and uncon- 

 scious as it is, a certain deeper beauty of its own. 

 Some attraction toward a form of life so unlike 

 our own, so unfathomable, so incapable of reali- 

 zation to our minds, exists in every poetical 

 heart, and reaches its furthest development in 

 such an exquisite, if overwrought, outpouring as 

 Shelley's " Sensitive-Plant." 



But all these poetical feelings, which to the 

 educated and refined among us have come to be 

 part and parcel of our love for flowers, do not 

 exist at all among children or unrefined adults. 

 They like them chiefly as colored and symmetri- 

 cal objects, very little distinctively as flowers. 

 Now and then one may meet a cottager whose 

 sentiments on the subject are more like one's 

 own ; but, on the whole, these sub tiler, evanes- 

 cent elements of .esthetic pleasure are confined to 

 the literary and artistic class. It was the error of 

 Burke and Alison to refer all aesthetic pleasure 

 to these rare constituents, overlooking the far 

 commoner gratifications of immediate sensuous 

 stimulation. 



Even among the most refined, there are cer- 

 tain flowers, like the gladiolus and the tulip, 

 which attract us chiefly by their brilliant hues ; 

 and others, like the daisy and the violet, which 

 appeal more strongly to our associated sentiments. 

 We have seen already what is the aesthetic worth 

 of a flower as a flower: let us ask next what is 

 the value of a daisy as a daisy. 



Dear little daisy, how beautiful it is, hiding 

 its modest little head in the grass, and bowing 

 gently before the tyrant breeze ! We think of it 

 as such a shrinking, unassuming, lovable little 

 flower. It does not flaunt abroad like the marsh- 

 mallow, nor grow in weedy patches like the dan- 



