Transactions. 69 



animals. Among savages we find everywhere attempts to 

 heighten the awfulness or splendour of the face, and even in 

 civilized society the crown and the coronet, and the natural 

 and artificial graces thrown around these parts of the body 

 most readily noticed, are patent. 



We have all observed the child's passion for flowers.* Can 

 it be anything more than coincidence, or is it that beauty is 

 attractive to the beautiful that humming-birds and butterflies 

 are so often found hovering around flowers, which are their 

 rivals in gorgeousness ? It seems as if the conspicuousness 

 and sometimes the form (as in the bee-orchis) of those gau- 

 dily-coloured petals, as Mr Darwin remarked, may be a decoy 

 for the purpose of making insects the agents for intercrossing 

 the seed. We have alluded to the allurement of light for cer- 

 tain beings, of which the French practice oi Uvirlincj for larks 

 is an example. In the case of the lark it may be replied that, 

 although eagerly drawn towards the light by the epicure's 

 invention that it has very little flame-colour, or any colour 

 in its plumage, as might have been expected in a bird so 

 easily victimised by its love of glitter, and selecting, from its 

 devotedness to light, for long ages, for mates, the gayest o^ 

 its kind. Other powerful laws in this country of soberest 

 sunshine may have repressed the tendency, and the sexual 

 charms seem to be expressed by northern birds more by the 

 ear, and by tropical birds more by the eye. What the lark, 

 although so sensitive to light, has failed to bring about has, 

 nevertheless, been realized in the case of animals of another 

 order to which we have already referred — namely, in the case 

 of insects.-f- Those magnificent beetles, the fire-flies, the 

 charm and wonder of the tropics, outshining our lunar-tinted 

 glow-worm exceedingly, the blue cold light of which is ex- 



* Dr. Grierson's monkey annoyed him by plucking his garden flowers. 



f These are curious facts bearing on this argument : — 



Ist. lu the asexual stages insects are not remarkable for loveliness. 

 2d. Those butterflies which habitually erect the wings have them beauti- 

 ful on the under side, which is not the case with those insects which 

 have not that habit. 

 3d. Male butterflies are generally most magnificent. 



