156 THE EVOLUTIONIST AT LARGE. 



the biggest and reddest apple from a row of 

 ten. Yet such unconscious selections, made 

 from time to time in generation after gene- 

 ration, have sufficed to produce at last all 

 the beautiful spots and metallic eyelets of 

 our loveliest English or tropical butterflies. 

 Insects always accustomed to exercising their 

 colour-sense upon flowers and mates, may 

 easily acquire a high standard of taste in that 

 direction, while still remaining comparatively 

 in a low stage as regards their intellectual 

 condition. But the fact I wish especially to 

 emphasise is this that the flowers produced 

 by the colour-sense of butterflies and their 

 allies are just those objects which we our- 

 selves consider most lovely in nature ; and 

 that the marks and shades upon their own 

 wings, produced by the long selective action 

 of their mates, are just the things which we 

 ourselves consider most beautiful in the ani- 

 mal world. In this respect, then, there seems 

 to be a close community of taste and feeling 

 between the butterfly and ourselves. 



