46 



THE RELATION BETWEEN 

 MUSCULAR ACTIVITY AND BEAUTY 

 . OF FORM IN ANIMALS, 



BY 



WALTER KIDD, M.D., F.Z.S. 



Read at the Meeting of the Society on 24th 

 February, 1904. 



T T is unnecessary here and now to make any excursion into. 



the abstract mazes of a theory of the Beautiful or the 

 *y origin of the Sense of Beauty, or, indeed, to define exactly 

 the idea intended to be brought forward by the term 

 Beauty of Form in Animals. The standards of beauty in 

 different nations and in the same nations at successive stages of 

 mental development, are too diverse and too shifting to allow 

 of precise definition. But for our practical purpose here, we 

 may take it as acknowledged that such an animal as a Gazelle 

 is beautiful in form, and that a Hippopotamus is the reverse. 

 " Solvitur ambulando" — that useful, if somewhat vague, saying — 

 may then be our motto in this matter. 



Beauty of Form must include two main elements — Firstly : 

 a measure of slenderness of build ; secondly : symmetry in whole 

 and in part, so that the head, trunk and limbs of the animal are 

 fairly proportioned to one another. A good example of this 

 symmetry in whole and in part, is familiar to us all in the 

 case of a well-bred domestic horse ; and an example of another 

 familiar animal which fails to reach fully this symmetry, is the 

 domestic ass, with its disproportionately long head and naso- 

 frontal region, and its remarkably long ears. In this case it 

 would not be correct to call the domestic ass ugly, but simply 

 to point out that in certain respects it is lacking in symmetry. 



The relation of what we call Beauty of Form to Muscular 

 Activity, is, of course, not universal, and this relation can only 



