309 
in the lion we have a type of majesty and strength, in 
the peacock of pride, in the ape a satire on kumanity, in the 
bee-hive the image of a well-ordered state, and so forth 
throughout creation ? 
Admirably did the Greek mind catch hold of these concep- 
tions. Nature, they said, gave certain means of offence and 
defence to all creatures, but when it came to the creation of 
woman, she had nothing left. What then did she give her ? 
Beauty ! and beauty overcomes strength. 
I know not how this may be, but without leaving my own 
belongings, I see how Nature arranges her parable. I have a 
strong, well-trimmed, quickset hedge, which, of course, I like 
to see uniform ; but, alas 1 what has happened ? I see it in 
parts decaying, dead, I have just been obliged to dig up 
portions and replace ; a remedy which, perhaps, will, after all, 
fail. For in searching after the cause, I call to mind that 
beautiful bindweed which in summer covered with its luxuriant 
foliage the hedge where it rested, and adorned in seeming 
thankfulness with its white flowers of the chastest purity the 
crabbed couch on which it rested so languidly. I remembered 
that it had in some way insinuated itself amongst the roots, 
depriving the supporting hedge of some part of its nourishment, 
and then with gently insinuating embrace binding itself ever 
more strongly round the branches of the thorn. The con- 
volvolus has conquered here, I say, — ^beauty has triumphed 
over strength. 
Whence, we may ask, come these destroyers, which I am 
ready to think comprise one-half of animated creation ? How 
beautiful many of them, are! how perfect in their creation! 
Look at the tiger of the East, and consider his ravages 
amongst the population ; and, again, the serpents of the same 
district. Of what fierce delight in life the genus Felis gives 
us instances ; how they rejoice to lick the warm blood ! Our 
common cat — what a perfect creature she is in her well-knit 
limbs, and what ingenious cruelty she displays in tormenting 
her victims ! 
Will our utilitarian opponents inform us what is the meaning 
of all this, or why the destroyers of the Saurian epoch have, 
after all, been compelled to give way to the comparative tran- 
quillity of the present ? Will beauty and grace have the 
victory in the end ? 
In page 103 (Keynolds) I read as follows : — 
“Have the living particles which are arranged into the shape of an 
organism an innate tendency to arrange themselves into the shape of that 
very organism to which they belong ? This is a bard thing to say, though 
the tendency to assume the specific form must he inherent in all parts of the 
organism.’^ 
