264 LORD GRIMTHORPE 
Tire Presipent having conveyed the thanks of the meeting to the 
author, 
Mr. A. ©. Ranyarp said if they defined beauty as that which caused 
enjoyment of perception, he thought they could understand the enjoyment of 
the perception of sunset colours, and of the beautiful things which were 
revealed to man by the microscope directly their beautiful polish and 
variety of colour was perceived, The impression of beauty might arise 
from the vivid sensation, accompanied by a mental action too rapid 
to analyse, as the mind perceived the exquisite finish or repetition of 
orm or tint. 
Mr. D. McLaren said he was sure they must all have been gratified at 
having expression given to conceptions which every one of them must have 
been conscious of now and again in their ordinary observation. , He 
remembered not many weeks ago being very much struck with the exceeding 
beauty of the fern-like forms produced on the pavement by the frost ; and 
he had often wondered that photographers did not take advantage of the 
opportunity they had of getting pictures of the most exquisite tracery. 
The idea suggested itself, why should this product of the frost be of such a 
shape as to commend itself at once to their highest ideas of beauty of form. 
He remembered on a previous evening when a paper was read upon the 
evidences of design in Nature, that those evidences mostly turned upon 
the evidently useful purpose in the design. But mention was also 
made of the symmetrical marking of butterflies’ wings; the four wings 
exactly corresponding—the two on the one side with the two on the 
other; also the wonderful beauty not only of the colour, but of the 
shapes of the spots. Take the common tortoiseshell butterfly, or the 
Admiral, as examples. Let any one look on these and ask how it came 
about that these animals were marked in such a way as to call forth our 
sense of beauty. 
Mr. W. Sr. C. Boscawen, F.R. Hist. Soc., said that the paper was a very 
interesting one. It was important to see how the beauties of Nature had 
appealed to the early races of the world. One could hardly turn to any of the 
old religious books of the East without seeing how Nature was the magazine of 
symbolism to which the writers turned. The very sunset had provided some 
of the most beautiful pictures in the Vedic hymns. It was the sunset and the 
radiant dawn that were the bases of those beautiful old poems of which we 
are the heirs. It was the same with the hymns of the ancient Chaldeans and 
Assyrians—just the same perception of the power of Nature, and of the 
adaptation of the beauty of Nature, and their impressions—expressed in 
grand and beautiful symbols— which made those hymns and poems so valuable 
to the student of mythology. There was another point in the paper to which 
he would refer. If man had been developed or evolved from this wonderful 
oyster father, it was a very curious thing that in the human race only we found 
any attempts to give graphic expression, and to reproduce that which we 
regarded as beautiful. ‘They knew the cave dwellers in France gave the only 
drawings in existence of the Mammoth, so accurate that it could be recognised 
