ON FLORAL ATTRACTIVENESS AND COLOUR 99 



composed of the Oriental Poppy it secured the 

 top award without a moment's hesitation. Is it 

 not possible that this judge was in sympathetic 

 attune with scarlet ; is it not possible that, were 

 he to have been bhndfolded, and set down in 

 a field of blue Cornflowers with one red Poppy 

 hidden away amongst them, he would at once 

 have been persuaded of the Poppy's presence? 



Thus we end upon a question mark. But let us 

 not feel abashed. " A man is wise," says Oliver 

 Goldsmith, "while he continues in pursuit of 

 wisdom, but when he once fancies that he has 

 found the object of his inquiry he then becomes 

 a fool." Let us find comfort in this dictum, and 

 confess that we have discovered scarcely a trace of 

 that for which we Ivdve been inquiring. Cardinal 

 Newman once observed that men know less of 

 animals than they do of angels, and I think we may 

 safely put the flowers by the side of the animals — 

 especially when our knowledge deals, as it has here 

 been dealing, with that mysterious subconscious- 

 ness which is tlie domain of angels. Familiarity is 

 the much-travelled road to ignorance. We often 

 deny to familiar things qualities that we stoutly 

 insist belong to things of which we know really no- 

 thing. The flowers are too obvious, too near to 



