Cii-vr. VI. BEAUTY HOW ACQUU4ED. 195 



Negro nor the Chinese admires the Caucasian bcau-idcal. The 

 idea also of picturesque beauty in scenery has arisen only within 

 modern times. On the view of beautiful objects havinj^ been 

 created for man's gratification, it ought to be shown that there 

 was less beauty on tlie face of the earth before man appeared 

 than since he canae on the stage. Were the l^cautiful volute 

 and cone shells of the Eocene epoch, and the gracefully-sculi> 

 tured ammonites of the Secondary period, created that man 

 might ages afterward admire them in his cabinet ? Few ob- 

 jects are more beautiful than the minute siliceous cases of the 

 diatomacea? : were these created that they might be examined 

 and admired xmder the higher powers of the microscope? The 

 beauty in this latter case, and in many others, is apparently 

 wholly due to symmetry of growth. Flowers rank among the 

 most beautiful productions of Nature ; and they have become 

 through natural selection beautiful, or rather conspicuous in 

 'contrast with the green leaves, that they might easily be ob- 

 served and visited by insects, so that their fertilization miglit 

 b'3 favored. I have come to this conclusion from finding it an 

 invariable rule that when a flower is fertilized by the wind it 

 never has a gayly-colored corolla. Again, several plants habitu- 

 ally produce two kinds of flowers : one kind open and colored 

 so as to attract insects; the other closed and iiot colored, desti- 

 tute of nectar, and never \-isited by insects. Hence we may 

 conclude that, if insects had never existed on the face of the 

 earth, the vegetation would not have been decked Avith beauti- 

 ful flowers, but Avould have produced only such poor flowers as 

 we now see on our firs, oaks, nut and ash trees, on grasses, 

 spinach, docks, and nettles. A similar line of argument holds 

 good with the many kinds of beautiful fruits ; that a ripe straw- 

 berry or cherry is as pleasing to the eye as to the palat<% that the 

 gayly-colored fruit of the spindle-wood-tree and the scarlet 

 berries of the holly are beautiful objects, will be admitted by 

 every one. But this beauty serves merely as a guide to birds 

 and beasts, that the fruit may be devoured and the manured 

 seeds thus disscminatod : I infer that this is the case from havhig 

 as yet found in every instance that seeds, Avhich are embedded 

 within a fruit of any king, tliat is witliin a fleshy or pulpy envel- 

 ope, if it be colored of any brilliant tint, or merely rendered 

 conspicuous by being white or black, are always disseminated 

 by being first devoured. 



On the other hand, I willinglv admit that a great nuinlKT 

 of male animals, as all our ir.< st jrorgcous birds, some f\^he3 



