402 UTILITARIAN ZOOLOGY 



simply devices for attracting beneficial insects (see p. 85). To 

 insects, therefore, our cesthetic debt is very large. 



The Courtship Colours of Insects, Birds, and some other 

 animals (see p. 143) are also as a rule beautiful to us, and have 

 played no small part in the evolution of our artistic sense. With 

 reference to the animals which display them it is pretty certain 

 that they are purely utilitarian. 



Were we similarly to consider the materials upon which our 

 ideas of the beautiful in form and movement are based, we should 

 once more have to acknowledge that the evolution of the eesthetic 

 sense has largely progressed on lines determined by the animal 

 world. 



Ugliness in the first instance appears to have been associated 

 with what was harmful or dangerous. The repugnance which 

 most of us feel towards snakes, scorpions, and centipedes is 

 probably part of the legacy which has been handed down to us 

 by our prehistoric ancestors (see vol. iii, p. 370). It is also 

 generally admitted that "warning coloration", which marks 

 undesirable properties in many animals, is crude and inartistic 

 from the human stand-point. 



The Sense of He.vrixg and its Bearing on ^-Esthetics. — 

 Ne.xt to sight, hearing is the most important sense, from the 

 aesthetic stand-point. The song of birds and the chirp of insects, 

 which further the courtships of their owners (and hence are of 

 utilitarian nature), must have had something to do with the 

 evolution of our standards of what is beautiful in the realm of 

 sound. 



The Sense of Smell and its Bearing on Esthetics. — 

 That certain odours are, to our thinking, of fragrant nature, is 

 largely due to the direct or indirect influence which animals have 

 had upon human development. Many species emit strong musky 

 odours, serving for purposes of recognition, and also as court- 

 ship accessories. Civet-cats are an example of this, and at one 

 time "civet", obtained from certain glands in these animals, was 

 a favourite perfume, though it would now be considered rank. 

 It has been replaced by musk, obtained from glands possessed 

 by the Musk Deer [Jl/osc/ins vioschifcrus), though even this 

 perfume is too coarse for cultivated tastes, which show a pre- 

 ference for floral odours. But, as we have elsewhere seen (see 

 p. 85), the delicate scents of flowers are of utilitarian mean- 



