2 2 Who painted the Flowers ? 



least utilitarian of the products of the earth ; that their 

 chief function is not in any way to toil or to spin, but to 

 adorn our fields and woods with the brightness of their 

 hues and the fragrance of their breath, and that in the 

 need of some such adornment to save the face of nature 

 from too dull a monotony, is somehow to be sought the 

 reason of their being. 



This, we now learn, is all wrong. The colours on the 

 petals of a Rose are no more to be attributed to a purely 

 artistic motive than those on the sign-board of an enter- 

 prising publican. Flowers are in fact like nothing so 

 much as sign-boards, which let the passing insect know 

 where good cheer, in the shape of honey, is to be had ; 

 and the blossoms which we see at the present day are 

 what they are simply because they have managed their 

 advertising business better than others, which they have 

 consequently trampled out of the world in the keen com- 

 petition for existence. 



This is no overstatement of the theory in vogue. 

 Flowers, it is said, need the service of insects to assist in 

 their propagation, and therefore must attract insects, 

 and those which have best succeeded in so doing have 

 best succeeded in the race of life. And consequently 

 the various hues and their various arrangements which 

 we see in blossoms have come to be there because their 

 casual presence helped in the great work of attrac- 

 tion, and therefore they were, by natural selection, 

 "developed." Hear Sir John Lubbock : * " To them 

 [the bees] we owe the beauty of our gardens, the sweet- 

 ness of our fields. To them flowers are indebted for 

 their scent and colour ; nay, for their very existence, in 

 its present form. Not only have the present shape and 

 outlines, the brilliant colours, the sweet scent, and the 

 honey of flowers, been gradually developed through the 

 unconscious selection exercised by insects ; but the very 

 arrangement of the colours, the circular bands and 

 radiating lines, the form, size, and position of the petals, 



1 British Wild Flowers in Relation to Insects, p. 45. 



