EVOLUTION OF THE COLORS OF BIRDS. 97 



less cats of Japan, suggests that novelty may be the 

 motive for choice in sexual selection. He says:* ''We 

 thus see how a slight but striking variation may at once 

 cause an energetic process of artificial selection, which 

 helps this variation to predominance: a hint for us to 

 be careful in passing judgment upon sexual selection, 

 for the latter also works upon such functionally indiffer- 

 ent but striking variations. In the case of the cats, 

 man has favored a particular variation, because the 

 novelty rather than the beauty of the character sur- 

 prised and attracted him. ^ ^ ^ i see ^lq reason 

 why the same process should not take place in animals 

 by the operation of sexual selection." 



If the colors of birds and insects had been produced 

 for the sake of novelty, as Weismann suggests, we might 

 indeed expect to find occasional or even frequent exam- 

 ples of beauty among them, but the rule would be that 

 glaring contrasts would prevail. There would be no 

 harmony in the arrang.ement or contrast of colors, and 

 the majority would possess the characteristics of those 

 insects that are branded with warning colors. 



Mr. Romanes, in his recent work, devotes more atten- 

 tion to the beautiful in the lower forms of life than has 

 been previously done, and affords an excellent explana- 

 tion of its occurrence. He says:t " Turning, then, to 

 the animal kingdom below the level of insects, here we 

 are bound to confess that the beauty which so often 

 meets us cannot reasonably be ascribed either to natural 

 or to sexual selection. Not to sexual selection for the 

 reasons already given; the animals in question are 

 neither sufficiently intelligent to possess any aesthetic 

 taste, nor, as a matter of fact, do we observe that they 

 exercise any choice in pairing. Not to natural selection, 



* Essays iipon Heredity, I, 1891, p. 443. 

 t 1. c, p. 408. 



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