LEAF AND TENDRIL 



ing catkins of the hazel and of the hickory and 

 oak flaunt in the wind, seen by all passers, while 

 the minute fruit-producing flower is seen by none. 

 Nature always keeps nearer to her low tones, to 

 her neutral ground, in the female than in the 

 male; the female is nearer the neuter gender than 

 is the male. She is negative when he is positive; 

 she is more like the quiet color tones in nature; she 

 represents the great home-staying, conservative, 

 brooding mother principle that pervades the uni- 

 verse. Harmony, repose, flowing lines, subdued 

 colors, are less the gift of the aggressive, warring 

 masculine element than of the withdrawing and 

 gentle feminine element. That the earth is our 

 mother, the sun our father, is a feeling as old as the 

 human race, and throughout the animal world the 

 neutral and negative character of the one and the 

 color and excess of the other still mark the two 

 sexes. Why, in the human species, the woman runs 

 more to the ornate and the superfluous than does the 

 man is a question which no doubt involves socio- 

 logical considerations that are foreign to my subject. 

 Darwin accounts for the wide departure from the 

 principle of utility and of protective coloration in 

 the forms and colors of so many birds and mammals 

 upon his theory of sexual selection, or the prefer- 

 ence of the female for bright colors and odd forms. 

 Wallace rejects this theory, and attributes these 

 things to the more robust health and vigor of the 

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