70 Transactwns. 



changed for a warmer yellow, and the source being the 

 thorax, not the abdominal segments, are examples suitable 

 to our purpose. Our male winged glow-worm has too little 

 luminosity to receive the appellation of fire-fly. The fire-flies 

 of Canada, and of the East and West Indies, are in millions. 

 They are attracted into the houses by means of torches to 

 destroy musquitoes, which they eagerly devour. They are 

 enclosed in glass vessels for reading with at night. They are 

 worn as ornaments in ladies' head-dresses at evening parties. 

 Here, then, are facts worth comparing. The savage's adora- 

 tion of light — the civilized man's confession of its beauty, 

 distinct from its use, in his expensive illuminations when 

 princes marry or victory is won — the insect's passion for it, 

 which seems to intoxicate it and to overleap its more cautious 

 instincts — until by long eager seeking, and selecting of the 

 feeblest spark, those fairy tapers have been developed in its 

 very organization in those regions where the sun conspired 

 with the insect's own appetancy. 



Space forbids us to take up the subject of the effects of 

 light and loveliness of colour or form on quadrupeds, or we 

 might tell some stories of pretty cats and vain apes in clothes. 



Our deductions are but tentative, and by no means account 

 for the grand phenomenon of vegetable and animal beauty, 

 but merely afford hints as to its agency and development. 

 Beauty is wide spread, but so, be it recollected, are eyes — 

 eyes fashioned after a manner wonderfully like our own, and, 

 no doubt, having preferences in the things which they see. 

 Low down in the kingdom of nature, in star fishes, in mol- 

 luscs, we still meet with the optic nerve and the faculty of 

 sight ; and if beauty be a solace, beauty meets those eyes 

 even when the waves and billows hide it from the sight of 

 man.* 



* Sticklebacks and lizards, for instance, brigliten in colour with love or 

 victory, and wane greatly with terror or defeat. 



