1 6 Mr. Grant Aliens Botanical Fables 



begets intelligence. Yet what creature succeeds so 

 thoroughly in getting round an object as that stupid 

 brute the Boa-constrictor? And how about the saga- 

 cious Dog and the cunning Fox? Neither of them 

 embraces its prey like the slow-witted Bear. The Parrot 

 is said by some writers, improving on Mr. Spencer, to 

 get the intelligence displayed in its talking, because it 

 has a prehensile foot and bill. But the Crossbill has 

 both, yet does not learn to talk ; and the Magpie, Jay, 

 and Jackdaw have neither, yet talk not so much worse 

 than a Parrot, and display intelligence, in other ways, 

 far beyond his. 



It would in fact be just as reasonable to maintain 

 that animals with big tails are cleverer than those 

 scantily furnished in that respect, citing, on the one 

 side, the Beaver, Fox, Magpie, and Collie Dog, and 

 on the other the Guinea-pig, the Mole, and the Bat. 



Mr. Allen sets his face with much determination 

 against the idea that there is any intentional beauty 

 in the universe; there is, in fact, no beauty in 

 anything at all till it is "read in by the fancy of the 

 human race." 1 In a sense we need not very much 

 quarrel with this, but evidently that sense is not his. 

 What he means is that there is no sort of relation 

 between the beauty we find in nature and the faculty 

 by which we recognize it ; that the thing which we feel 

 to be beautiful, and the perception of its beauty within 

 ourselves, equally come to exist in a blundering hap- 

 hazard fashion quite independently the one of the other. 

 The subject is too large and too deep a one to be 

 attempted here in any fulness ; it will suffice to set 

 forth one of Mr. Allen's notices of it, leaving it to speak 

 for itself. He is talking of the flower of the Lesser 

 Bindweed : 2 "Nothing could be prettier than this alter- 

 nation of dark and light belts; but how was it pro- 

 duced ? Merely thus : The Convolvulus blossom in the 

 bud is twisted, and the bits of the blossom which are 



1 Evolutionist, p. 199. 

 2 Evolutionist^ p. 200. The italics are mine. 



