The Daisy's Pedigree, 



you into the beetle's body. Vou fancy him admiring 

 that fairy landscape as you would admire it were you 

 in his place, provided always you felt yourself quite 

 secure from the murderous jaws and hooked feet of 

 some gigantic insect tiger lurking in the bristly thicket 

 behind your back. ]^ut, as a matter of fact, I greatly 

 doubt whether the beetle has much feeling for beauty 

 of scenery. For a good many years past I have 

 devoted a fair share of my time to studying, from 

 such meagre hints as we possess, the psychology of 

 insects : and on the whole I am inclined to think that, 

 though their aesthetic tastes are comparatively high 

 and well-developed, they are, as a rule, decidedly 

 restricted in range. Beetles and butterflies only seem 

 to admire two classes of visible objects — their own 

 mates, and the flowers in which they find their food. 

 They never show much sign of deliberate love for 

 scenery generally or beautiful things in the abstract 

 outside the limits of their own practical life. If this 

 seems a narrow aesthetic platform for an intelligent 

 butterfly, one must remember that our own country 

 bumpkin has perhaps a still narrower one ; for the 

 only matter in which he seems to indulge in any dis- 

 tinct aesthetic preference, to exercise any active taste 

 for beauty, is in the choice of his sweetheart, and even 

 there he is not always conspicuous for the refinement 



