274 THE FACT OF BEAUTY 



that they never fail to set up pleasant changes in the human 

 eye. 



The third component of the beautiful in animals is move- 

 ment. Just as we enjoy watching a waterfall, a fountain, 

 the waves, or even the dance of motes in the sunlit air, so 

 we are delighted with the jellyfishes throbbing in the tide, 

 the flotilla of sepias all keeping time as they swim, the flying- 

 fishes rising before the prow of the steamer like locusts 

 before us as we walk in the meadow, the porpoises gam- 

 bolling in the waves, the jerboas with their startling jumps, 

 the flight of bat and bird and butterfly, and the way of the 

 serpent on the rock. Let us watch the last. As Sir Richard 

 Owen said, the snake can '' outclimb the monkey, outswim 

 the fish, outleap the zebra, outwrestle the athlete, and crush 

 the tiger '\ The accurate zoologist cannot accept every word 

 of Ruskin's famous description of the way of the serpent, 

 but he will admit that it gets at the fact of beauty. ^^ That 

 rivulet of smooth silver — how does it flow, think you ? It 

 literally rows on the earth with every scale for an oar; 

 it bites the dust with the ridges of its body. Watch it when 

 it moves slowly — a wave, but without wind ! a current, but 

 with no fall ! all the body moving at the same instant, yet 

 some of it to one side, some to another, or some forward and 

 the rest of the coil backwards, but all with the same calm 

 will and equal way — no contraction, no extension ; one sound- 

 less, causeless, march of sequent rings, and spectral proces- 

 sion of spotted dust, with dissolution in its fangs and dis- 

 location in its coils. Startle it — the winding stream will be- 

 come a twisted arrow; the wave of poisoned life will lash 

 through the grass like a cast lance." 



Spoil an animal — say by fattening — and the beauty of 

 its movements vanishes, — we have the waddling duck and 



