ORNITHOLOGICAL OBSERVATION IN ICELAND. 221 



tion must necessarily develop within the limits of what there is 

 to perceive. Even so, however, there is not only beauty of form, 

 as well as of colour,* but also a good deal of beauty in colours to 

 which we apply the term dull. In short, in and for the opposite 

 sexes of even the most sober-suited species, there are objects to 

 see and desire, and these objects vary. What more should be 

 wanted for sexual selection to make a foundation t upon ? And 

 with all this denial and scepticism, what other even tolerable 

 explanation has ever been given of very beautiful sexual adorn- 

 ment in combination with a very elaborate and careful display of 

 it, by which both the details and the general effect of the beauty 

 are shown forth, or, as it were, insisted upon ? 



Supposing incubation and nest-building to have originated in 

 the manner suggested, it might seem that we have here two very 

 important instincts with which reason can neither have, nor have 

 ever had, anything to do. But there is another way, as it appears 

 to me, by which intelligence might enter into the composition of 

 an instinct, than through the odd one of lapsing on entry, and 

 that it has done so in the above two instances is a view that seems 

 more in accordance with the whole of the facts than that they 

 are, now, in all cases, entirely devoid of this factor. Why should 

 not reason, in the course of time, have become grafted, so to 

 speak, on to the main stem of unintelligent, motiveless actions?]: 

 In this I can see no difficulty, for the variations of intelligence 

 must be as much under the dominion of Natural Selection as 



* A wing, spread effectively, for instance — still more a pair of wings — is 

 beautiful even though it be brown, of which truth there can be no better 

 proof, outside Nature herself, than in some of the plates in Mr. Howard's 

 masterly work on the Warblers. 



f In out-of-the-way parts wbere there are only a very few women, who 

 happen (mirabile dictu) to be plain, these step forth as beauties, and act, and 

 are acted by, as such. Still more is this the case with only one. Is not the 

 law, here, alike for high and low ? 



I " "We had a kitten which sucked its mother and when a month old 



taken to , and sucked another cat ; then to and sucked two other 



cats, and then its instinct was confounded and became mixed with reason 

 and experience ; for it tried repeatedly to suck three or four other kittens of 

 its own age which no one, as far as I am aware, ever saw any other kitten 

 do. Thus born instinct may be modified by experience." (Darwin's MS. 

 notes, quoted in Romanes' ' Mental Evolution in Animals,' ch. ii. p. 172.) 

 And why not in wild nature, on the up-grade ? 



