4io Animal Life and Intelligence. 



evolved. The grandeur of Alpine scenery, the charm of a 

 winding river, the pleasing undulations of a flowing land- 

 scape, no one can say that these were evolved for the 

 sake of their beauty. The fact of their being beautiful 

 is, therefore, no proof that the blue gentian, or the red 

 admiral, or the robin redbreast were evolved for the sake 

 of, or by means of, the beauty that they possess. Again, 

 one leading feature in the beauty of flowers is their 

 symmetry. The beauty is, so to speak, kaleidoscopic 

 beauty. It is not so much the single veined or marbled 

 petal that is so lovely, as the group of similar petals 

 symmetrically arranged. But this symmetry can hardly 

 be said to have been selected for its aesthetic value ; it is 

 rather part of the natural symmetry of the plant. Even 

 with butterflies and birds and beasts the symmetrical 

 element is an important one in their beauty.* 



I must not attempt to analzye our sense of beauty or 

 endeavour to trace its origin. It appears to involve a 

 pleasurable stimulation of the sense-organs concerned, 



* Another example of beauty which can hardly be said to have been 

 evolved for beauty's sake is to be seen in birds' eggs. Mr. Henry Seebohm 

 regards the bright colours of some birds' eggs as a difficulty in the way of the 

 current interpretation of organic nature. " Few eggs," he says (Nature, vol. 

 xxxv. p. 237), " are more gorgeously coloured [than those of the guillemot], 

 and no eggs exhibit such a variety of colour. [They are sometimes of a bluish 

 green, marbled or blotched with full brown or black ; sometimes white streaked 

 with brown ; sometimes pale green or almost white with only the ghosts of 

 blotches and streaks ; and sometimes the reddish brown extends so as to 

 form the ground-tint which is blotched with deeper brown.] It is impossible 

 to suppose that protective selection can have produced colours so conspicuous 

 on the white ledges of chalk cliffs; and sexual selection must have been 

 equally powerless. It would be too ludicrous a suggestion to suppose that a 

 cock guillemot fell in love with a plain-coloured hen because he remembered 

 that last season she laid a gay-coloured egg." 



If we connect colour with metabolic changes, its occurrence in association 

 with the products of the highly vascular oviduct will not be surprising. 

 Some guidance is, however, on the principles advocated in Chapter VI., required 

 to maintain a standard of coloration. In many cases such guidance is found 

 in protective selection, as in the plover's eggs in our frontispiece. In the 

 guillemot's egg such protective selection seems to be absent, and, as Mr. 

 Seebohm himself says, " no eggs exhibit such a variety of colour." 



In our present connection, however, the point to be noticed is that many 

 eggs are undoubtedly beautiful. But they cannot have been in any way 

 selected for the sake of their beauty. 





