Chap. XV.] RECAPITULATION. 283 



there is so much beauty throughout nature ; for this 

 may be largely attributed to the agency of selection. 

 That beauty, according to our sense of it, is not universal, 

 must be admitted by every one who will look at some 

 venomous snakes, at some fishes, and at certain hideous 

 bats with a distorted resemblance to the human face. 

 Sexual selection has given the most brilliant colours, 

 elegant patterns, and other ornaments to the males, and 

 sometimes to both sexes of many birds, butterflies, and 

 other animals. With birds it has often rendered the 

 voice of the male musical to the female, as well as to 

 our ears. Flowers and fruit have been rendered con- 

 spicuous by brilliant colours in contrast with the green 

 foliage, in order that the flowers may be easily seen, 

 visited, and fertilised by insects, and the seeds dis- 

 seminated by birds. How it comes that certain colours, 

 sounds, and forms should give pleasure to man and the 

 lower animals, — that is, how the sense of beauty in its 

 simplest form was first acquired, — we do not know any 

 more than how certain odours and flavours were first 

 rendered agreeable. 



As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts 

 and improves the inhabitants of each country only in 

 relation to their co-inhabitants ; so that we need feel no 

 surprise at the species of any one country, although on 

 the ordinary view supposed to have been created and 

 specially adapted for that country, being beaten and 

 supplanted by the naturalised productions from another 

 land. Nor ought we to marvel if all the contrivances 

 in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely 

 perfect, as in the case even of the human eye ; or if 

 some of them be abhorrent to our ideas of fitness. We 



need not marvel at the sting of the bee, when used 

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