ON THE UTILITY TO FLOWERS OF THEIR BEAUTY.

T HE question which I propose to consider in this paper is how far the beauty of blossoms can be accounted for by the utility of this beauty to the plant producing them. It is manifestly only one particular case of a larger inquiry whether the beauty which Nature exhibits can be accounted for by its utility.

These questions connect themselves with some of the highest points of the philosophy of the universe. Is the system of the universe intellectual, or is it purely material? Is there an ordering mind, or is there merely blind and struggling matter? Are there final causes as well as material causes, or are there material causes only?

These questions have been asked and answered in opposite senses, from the first dawn of philosophy to the present hour; and during all that period of time the battle has been raging—and has spread, too, over the whole realm of Nature. Scarcely any branch of natural science exists which has not furnished materials for at least a skirmish; so that it requires an experienced and impartial eye to be able rightly to understand the true fortunes of the contest over the whole field of battle. True it is, that for every man the question between the two theories has to be decided by somewhat simpler considerations than any such survey. Something in every man seems inevitably to determine him towards either the intellectual or the material theory of things.

The existence of beauty in the world is a very remarkable fact. On the theory of a Divine and beneficent Creator, this fact has seemed no difficulty; but the theory of a mere blind fermentation of matter gives no account of it, except as a mere accident, which, on the doctrine of chances, should be perhaps a very rare and unusual accident. Hence the existence of beauty has from of old been a favourite theme of the theistic believers. "Let them know how much better the Lord of them is," says the author of the Wisdom of Solomon, speaking of the works of Nature, "for the first Author of beauty hath created them ... for by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the Maker of them is seen."[1] The same familiar view has lately been presented by the Duke of Argyll in his "Reign of Law":[2]—

"It would be to doubt the evidence of our senses and of our reason, or else to assume hypotheses of which there is no proof whatever, if we were to doubt that mere ornament, mere variety, are as much an end and aim in the workshop of Nature as they are known to be in the workshop of the goldsmith and the jeweller. Why should they not? The love and desire of these is universal in the mind of man. It is seen not more distinctly in the highest forms of civilized art than in the habits of the rudest savage, who covers with elaborate carving the handle of his war-club or the prow of his canoe. Is it likely that this universal aim and purpose of the mind of man should be wholly without relation to the aims and purposes of his Creator? He that formed the eye to see beauty, shall He not see it? He that gave the human hand its cunning to work for beauty, shall His hand never work for it? How, then, shall we account for all the beauty of the world—for the careful provision made for it where it is only the secondary object, not the first?"

But even if beauty be always associated with utility and have in fact been brought about by its utility, it may nevertheless have been an object in the mind of a Divine artificer, who may have been minded to use the one as a means and end to the other. We may therefore, I think, approach the subject with a perfect freedom from any theological bias.

The whole subject will, I believe, be felt by some persons to be a piece of moonshine,—the whole discussion fit for cloudland, not for this practical solid world of ours.

Beauty, such persons would say, is not a real thing, an objective fact: it is a part of man, not of the world—it is in him who sees, not in the thing seen: it is seen by one man in one thing—by another man in another.

To this it seems a sufficient answer to say that the relation of any one external thing to any one mind which produces the peculiar condition which we call the perception of beauty, is a fact, and, like every other single fact, must have an adequate cause. But when we find that there are forms of beauty, such as the beauty of sunlight, which operate alike on all men, and, it would seem, on all sensitive beings—when we find that the brilliant flowers which attract the child in the field or the lady in the drawing-room, attract the insect tribes—we feel ourselves in the presence of a great body of persistent relations, which it is impossible to pass over as unreal or as unimportant.

But, again, there is ugliness in the world; and one ugly thing, it is suggested, destroys all your deductions from beauty. This, no doubt, is a very important fact for any one to grapple with who proposes to give any theoretical explanation of the presence of beauty in the universe; but for me, who am only inquiring whether and how far beauty is useful, it is not really material, because there can be no doubt that beauty, as well as ugliness, exists in the world. This much I will say in passing, that, to my mind, the balance of things is in favour of beauty and against ugliness—the tendency is in favour of beauty, not ugliness, and that tendency may be a very important thing to think of.

Furthermore, the fact that we recognize ugliness seems to make our recognition of beauty more important; for it shows that the perception of beauty is not mere habit, and that we have an inward and independent judgment on the matter—we are able to approve the one thing on the score of beauty, and to reject the other as ugly.

Even allowing fully for the existence of ugliness, it must be conceded that the world around us presents a vast mass of beauty—complex, diverse, commingled, and not easily admitting of analysis. It is common alike to the organic and the inorganic realms of Nature. The pageants of the sky at morning, noon, and night, the forms of the trees, the beauty of the flowers, the glory of the hills, the awful sublimity of the stars—these, and a thousand things in Nature, fill the soul with a sense of beauty, which the art neither of the poet, nor of the philosopher, nor of the painter can come near to depict. We are moved and overcome, sometimes by this object of beauty, sometimes by that, but yet more by the complex mass of glory of the universe.

"For Nature beats in perfect tune,

And rounds with rhyme her every rune;

Whether she work on land or sea,

Or hide underground her alchemy.

Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,

Or dip thy paddle in the lake,

But it carves the bow of beauty there,

And ripples in rhyme the oar forsake."

As yet no attempt has been made to show the utility of this promiscuous and multitudinous crowd of beauties—and it seems not likely that such an attempt can yet be made with success: and the phenomena of Nature are therefore likely for a long time to come to impress most men with the sense of beauty for beauty's sake. But in respect of certain particular and separable instances, the attempt has recently been made to show that the beauty exhibited is useful to the structure exhibiting it, and consequently that it may be accounted for by the strictly utilitarian principle of the survival of the fittest,—one instance in which this has been most notably attempted being in respect of the beauty of flowers. Let us consider how far beauty can thus be accounted for in this particular case.

There will be a great advantage in this course; for beauty is a thing about which it is not very easy to argue: it is too subtle, too evanescent, too disputable, to afford an easy material for the logical or scientific crucible; and these difficulties we shall best surmount by in the first place isolating certain beautiful things for our consideration, and limiting to them our inquiry into how far each of the rival theories is sufficient to explain their existence. We shall thus try to narrow the great controversy to very definite and distinct issues.

"Flowers," says Mr. Darwin,[3] "rank amongst the most beautiful productions of Nature, and they have become, through natural selection, beautiful, or rather conspicuous in contrast with the greenness of the leaves, that they might be easily observed and visited by insects, so that their fertilization might be favoured. I have come to this conclusion, from finding it an invariable rule that when a flower is fertilized by the wind it never has a gaily-coloured corolla. Again, several plants habitually produce two kinds of flowers: one kind open and coloured, so as to attract insects; the other closed and not coloured, destitute of nectar, and never visited by insects. We may safely conclude that, if insects had never existed on the face of the earth, the vegetation would not have been decked with beautiful flowers, but would have produced only such poor flowers as are now borne by our firs, oaks, nut and ash trees, by the grasses, by spinach, docks, and nettles."

No one can doubt who watches a meadow on a summer's day that insects are attracted by the scent and the colours of the flowers. The whole field is busy with their jubilant hum. These little creatures have the same sense of beauty that we have. What room there is for thought in that fact! There is a subtle bond of mental union between ourselves and the creatures whom we so often despise. There is a joy widespread and multiplied beyond our highest calculation. What a deadly blow to that egotism of man which thinks of all beauty as made for him alone!

But I return to the argument. We have presented to our notice three kinds of attraction which operate upon insects—the conspicuousness of colour and form, the beauty of the smell, and the pleasant taste of the honey. No one, as I have said, who watches a meadow or a garden on a summer's day can for a moment doubt the operation of these causes, or question the direct action of insects in producing the fertilization of flowers. In that sense the beauty of a flower is clearly of direct use to the flower which exhibits it. It is better for it that it should be fertilized by insects than not fertilized at all; but is it better for it to be fertilized by insects than by the wind, or by some other agency, if such exist?

This shall be the subject of inquiry. But before we can answer it, we must go a little afield and collect some other of the facts of the case.

The conclusion that beauty is useful for the fertilization of the flower does not rest merely on the general phenomena of a summer meadow. It is confirmed by many other observations. Flowers are not merely attractive in themselves; they are frequently rendered attractive by their grouping. Sometimes flowers individually small are gathered into heads, or spikes, or bunches, or umbels, and so produce a more conspicuous effect than would result from a more equal distribution of the flowers; sometimes yet more minute flowers or florets are gathered together into what appears a single flower, and often have the outer florets so modified both in shape and colour as to produce the general effect of one very brilliant blossom, as in the daisy or the marigold.

Sometimes the same result is produced by "the massing of small flowers into dense cushions of bright colour."[4] This, as is well known, is of common occurrence with Alpine flowers; and this mode of growth, as well as the great size of many Alpine blossoms as compared with that of the whole plant, and the great brilliance of Alpine plants as compared with their congeners of the lowlands, have all been explained by reference to the comparative rarity of insects in the Alpine heights, and the consequent necessity, if the plants are to survive, that they should offer strong attractions to their needful friends.[5] A similar explanation has been offered for the brilliant colours of Arctic flowers.[6]

Furthermore, this curious fact exists, that of flowering plants a large number do not ripen or put forward their pistils and stamens at the same periods of their growth: in some cases the pistil is ready to receive the pollen whilst the anthers are immature and not ready to supply it: such are called proterogynous. In other cases the anthers are ripe before the pistil is ready to receive the pollen: these are proterandrous. In either case the same event happens—that the ovules can never be fertilized by the pollen of the same blossom, nor without some foreign agency, generally that of insects.

Lastly, there is a large number of plants, including a great proportion of those with unsymmetrical blossoms, of which the flowers have been shown to be specially adapted by various mechanical contrivances for insect agency. Nothing, as is well known, is more marvellous than the variety and subtlety of the arrangements for the purpose which exist in orchidaceous plants, as explained by the patience and genius of Mr. Darwin.

In view of these facts it would be impossible to deny that conspicuousness is one of the agencies in force for the fertilization of flowers; that, to use the recent language of Mr. Darwin, "flowers are not only delightful for their beauty and fragrance, but display most wonderful adaptations for various purposes."[7]

So far we have considered the evidence which is affirmative, and in favour of the explanation of the existence of beauty in flowers; we have found clearly that beauty, or rather conspicuousness, is in many cases useful to the plant. But beauty is by no means the only agency in this necessary process. On the contrary, the agencies actually in operation are very numerous.

As Mr. Darwin points out in the passage I have cited, and still more at large in his work "On the Different Forms of Flowers," a large proportion of existing plants are fertilized by the action of the wind; and again, many plants bear two kinds of flowers, the one conspicuous and attractive to insects, the other inconspicuous and which never open to admit the activity either of insects or of the wind. Moreover, there are various other agencies called into play. Some plants, such as the Hypericum perforatum, one of the commonest of the St. John's Worts, and probably the bindweed, are, it seems, fertilized by the withering of the corolla, which naturally brings the stamens into contact with the style, and so transfers the pollen grains from the one to the other.[8] Other plants, again, such as the common centaury (Erythræa centaurium) and the Chlora perfoliata, are fertilized by the closing of the corolla over the anthers and stigma, not in the death but in the sleep of the plant.[9] In the brilliant autumnal Colchicum, and in the Sternbergia, again, according to Dr. Kerner, Nature has recourse to a more complex machinery: the corolla first closes over the anthers, which are at a lower level than the stigma, and takes off some of the pollen; a growth of the corolla carries the pollen dust to the level of the stigma, and a second closing of the corolla transfers the pollen to the stigmatic surface. The pollen has been made to ascend to its proper place by an arrangement which reminds one of the man-engine of a Cornish mine.[10] A similar arrangement is described as occurring in the bright-flowered Pedicularis.[11]

Let us take another group of beautiful flowers which adorn our greenhouses and our tables: I mean the Asclepiadæ, to which the Stephanotis and the Hoya belong. The former is distinguished by the beauty of its scent as well as of its flowers. Both present flowers not merely conspicuous in themselves from their size, form, and colour, but conspicuous also by reason of their grouping. Here, if anywhere, we should expect that beauty should justify itself by its utility. But the facts appear to be just the other way. The pollen is collected together into waxy masses, which are arranged in a very peculiar manner on the pistil; and the pollen tubes pass from the pollen grains whilst still enclosed within the anthers, and so bring about fertilization without the intervention of insect agency. It is difficult to suppose the Asclepiadæ can have become beautiful for the sake of an agency of which they never avail themselves.

Our common Fumitory has not very conspicuous flowers, but still they have considerable attractiveness of form and still more of colour, due both to the individual blossom and to their grouping together; and yet Fumaria is said to be self-fertile.[12]

A much more brilliantly coloured member of the same family is the Dicentra (Diclytra) spectabilis, so familiar in our gardens. Any one who examines the flowers of this species will continually find the pollen grains transferred to the stigma without the slightest trace of the flower ever having opened so as to allow of insect agency. Dr. Lindley[13] has given an account of the mechanism for self-fertilization; and this flower has recently been the subject of an elaborate study by the German botanist, Hildebrand,[14] and he concurs in the view that the anthers inevitably communicate their pollen to the pistil, and that as the result of a very complicated and subtle arrangement of the parts, which it would be useless to attempt to describe without diagrams. But he believes that in addition to the arrangements for self-fertilization, another arrangement exists for producing cross-fertilization by insects; but as the plant has never produced seed under his observation, he is unable to tell whether one mode of fertilization is more useful than the other. I think the evidence of the self-fertilization is far clearer than that of the cross-fertilization.

Now, if the Dicentra has become beautiful in order to attract insects, it must have done so through a long series of developments, for its adaptation to their agency is of the most complex kind. It is difficult to suppose either that, side by side with this development for cross-fertilization, there has been also developed another complex arrangement for self-fertilization, or that an earlier complex arrangement for self-fertilization should have survived through the changes necessary to render the flower fit for insect fertilization. The co-existence in one organism of two complex schemes for different objects, and the interlacing of those two schemes in one beautiful flower (which, if Hildebrand be right, occurs in the Dicentra), seem to be things very improbable if the beautiful flower has become what it is in the pursuit of one only of those objects. These speculations may be premature as regards the particular flower; but the co-existence of two modes of fertilization is not peculiar to Dicentra and seems to furnish material for important reflection.

Yet one more plant must be considered. The Loasa aurantiaca is a creeper which grows freely in our gardens, and has large and brilliantly coloured scarlet flowers turned up with yellow. Its seeds set freely in cultivation. The means by which fertilization is effected are—unless my observations have misled me—very peculiar. When the flower first unfolds, the numerous stamens are found collected together in bundles in depressions or folds of the petals; after a while the anthers begin to move, and one after the other the stamens pass upwards from their nests in the petals, and gather in a thick group round the style; subsequently a downward and backward movement begins, which brings the anthers against the pistils, and restores the stamens nearly to their old position, but with exhausted and faded anthers. I have never seen any insects at work on the flowers, and yet I find the plant to be a free seeder.

So long ago as 1840 M. Fromond enumerated several conspicuous flowers in which, according to his observations, fertilization was effected without the agency of either the wind or insects.[15] And much more recently an American writer, Mr. Meehan, has given a list of eleven genera, amongst others, in which he has observed the pistils covered with the pollen of the plant before the flower has opened, and in the one case which he submitted to the microscope, it was found that the pollen tubes were descending through the pistil towards the ovarium.[16] Amongst the genera he names were Westaria, Lathyras, Ballota, Circes Genista, Pisum, and Linaria.

The instances which I have given are mostly from plants familiar in our fields, our gardens, or our greenhouses. They are, I think, sufficient to make us pause before we conclude that all conspicuous flowers are fertilized by insect agency. It may be that Bacon's warning to attend as carefully to negative as to affirmative instances has been a little forgotten. Moreover, these instances seem to show that it would be a great error to suppose that all flowers are fertilized either by insects or by the wind; and it is probable that the more the subject is considered the more complex will the arrangements for fertilization be found to be.

The agencies to which I have last referred exist, it will be observed, in beautiful and conspicuous flowers; and yet act independently of that beauty and that conspicuousness: so that in each instance these facts are, on the utilitarian theory, unexplained and residual phenomena. They, therefore, demand earnest inquiry. For the existence of a single residual phenomenon is notice to the inquirer that he has not got to the bottom of his subject; that his theory is either not the truth or not the whole truth.

Do the facts justify us in concluding that insect fertilization is more beneficial to the plant than fertilization by the wind or any other agency? Do they afford any sufficient cause for that change from the one mode of fertilization to the other which has been suggested? The facts bearing on these questions are very remarkable; for, as we have already seen, many plants produce two kinds of blossom, the one conspicuous and the other inconspicuous; the one visited by insects, the other self-fertilizing. Recent observation shows that these cleistogamous flowers, as they are called, are present in a great variety of plants.[17] In the violet they are found to exist, being seen in the summer and autumn, when all the more brilliant flowers have gone. The one flower has everything in its favour—honey and a beauty of colour and of smell that has passed into a proverb—and it opens its blue wings to the visits of the insect tribe in the season of their utmost jollity and life. The other has everything against it: it is inconspicuous, scentless, ugly, and closed. And yet, which succeeds the better? which produces the more seed? The cleistogamous, and not the brilliant flowers: the victory is with ugliness, and not with beauty.

The same is true of the Impatiens fulva. This is an American plant, closely akin to the balsam of our gardens, which has now thoroughly established itself on the banks of some of our rivers, as the Wey, and the tributary stream that runs through Abinger and Shere. It has attractive flowers hung on the daintiest flower-stalks. It has also little green flowers that never open and almost escape attention; and yet they, and not the large flowers, are the great source of seed vessels to the plant—the great security that the life of the race will be continued.[18] Again, ugliness has borne away the palm of utility from beauty.

So, too, in America the same happens with the Specularia perfoliata: in shady situations all its flowers are said to be cleistogamous, and to be wonderfully productive and strong.[19]

The conditions of the problem in these cases are such as to make them of the last importance in our inquiry into the utility of beauty; for in each case we are comparing a conspicuous and an inconspicuous flower in the very same plant. The conditions seem to exclude the possibility of error in the result.

Two explanations have been suggested of the origin of these cleistogamous flowers: according to the one, they are the earliest form of the flowers; according to the other view, they are degraded forms of the more beautiful flowers.[20] For our purpose, it is immaterial whether of the two explanations is correct; for either the development of beauty has diminished the utility of the flower, or the loss of beauty has increased the utility: in either event, utility and beauty are dissociated the one from the other.

Another experiment Nature presents us with, in which the conditions are nearly, if not quite, as rigorously exclusive of error. The vast majority of orchidaceous plants are, as already mentioned, dependent on insect agency, for fertilization, and present a marvellous variety of contrivances for effecting cross-fertilization through their activity. But one of our orchids (the Bee orchis) is self-fertilized. I hardly know anything in vegetable life more striking or beautiful than to see its delicate pollinaria at a certain stage of its inflorescence descending on to the stigmatic surface and so yielding their pollen grains to the fertilization of their own blossom; and yet the Bee orchis has been found by observers to be as free a seeder as any of its tribe. Here the beauty and conspicuousness of the blossom, which are very great, are, as far as can be seen, useless; the plant gains nothing by the attractiveness which it offers, and the colouring and ornamentation of the blossom are, on the theory of utility, residual phenomena.

It is difficult to imagine that the change from wind or self-fertilization can, so to speak, commend itself to the flower on the score either of economy or success. If the anemophilous blossom must produce somewhat more pollen than the entomophilous, it saves the great expenditure of material and vital force requisite for the production of the large and conspicuous corolla. The one is fertilized by every wind that blows; the other, especially in the case of highly-specialized flowers like the orchids, may be incapable of fertilization except by a very few insects. The celebrated Madagascar orchid Angræcum can be fertilized, it is said, only by a moth with a proboscis from ten to fourteen inches long—a moth so rare or local that it is as yet known to naturalists only by prophecy. It is difficult to suppose that it would be beneficial for the plant's chance of survival to exchange as the fertilizing agent the universal wind for this most localized insect.

And here another line of evidence comes in and demands consideration. The face of Nature, as we now see it, has not been always exhibited by the world. The flora, like the fauna, of the world has changed: how has it changed as regards the beauty of the flowers? Does it give any testimony to that becoming beautiful of the flowers of plants to which Mr. Darwin refers? The answer is not a very certain one, by reason of the imperfection of the geological record, of the probability that beautiful plants, if they had existed, and had been of a delicate structure, would have perished and left no trace behind. But so far as an answer can be given, it is in favour of the increase of floral beauty in the vegetable world. The earliest flower known (the Pothocites Grantonii) occurs in the coal measures; its flowers cannot have been other than inconspicuous in themselves, though it is possible that by grouping they were made more attractive to the eye; in the period of the growth of the coal, when this plant lived, the vast forests seem principally to have been composed of trees without conspicuous blossoms, huge club mosses and marestails, and many conifers; in the earlier periods of this earth we have no trace of conspicuous blossom, and it is not till the upper chalk that the oaks and myrtles and Proteaceæ appear as denizens of the forests. In like manner, if we refer to the appearance of insects on the earth, we have no clear trace in very early strata of those classes of insects which now do the principal work of fertilization for our conspicuous flowers. In the coal measures there have been found insects of the scorpion, beetle, cockroach, grasshopper, ant, and neuropterous families; but of a butterfly or moth there is only evidence of great doubt. It seems probable, then, and one cannot say more, that with the progress of the ages, flowers, as a whole, have become more conspicuous and attractive. But if we inquire whether the dull flowers of one era have grown into the conspicuous flowers of another, the answer is negative. The conifers of the coal age were anemophilous then, and are anemophilous still; they show no symptom of becoming more conspicuous; the same is true of the oaks of the chalk period, and of all other inconspicuous plants. The difference between conspicuous and inconspicuous flowers appears a permanent one; and the page of geology gives no evidence in favour of the supposed change.

Another observation must yet be made. Comparing flowers fertilized by insects and by the wind, it has never, so far as I can learn, been observed that the former are more certain of being set or more prolific than the latter; and, as already shown, the inconspicuous flowers are often more fertile than the conspicuous ones. What motive would there be, then, for the inconspicuous flowers of the early geologic periods to convert themselves into the brilliant corollas of our day?

Carefully considered, the passage which I have cited from Mr. Darwin does not account for the beauty of the flowers of plants at all; it accounts only for their conspicuousness, as the writer himself points out; and the two things are so different, that to account for the one is not even to tend to account for the other. If any one will consider the beauty of every inflorescence, whether conspicuous or not—a beauty which the microscope always makes apparent where the unaided eye fails to perceive it; or, again, the easily perceived beauty of many inconspicuous plants; or, lastly, the beauty of many conspicuous plants which does not tend to their conspicuousness—he will see how true this is.

For in many conspicuous flowers there are delicate pencillings and markings which certainly do not tend to make them such, but which nevertheless add greatly to their beauty, as we perceive it. In the regularly shaped flowers these markings often start from the centre of the blossom like radii, and they may be conceived as guiding the insects to the central store of honey. Such guidance can hardly be needful, as the shape of the flower itself generally does all, and more than all, that the markings can do in the way of guidance. But it is by no means true that all the markings lead to the centre of the flower: many are transverse; many are marginal; some are by way of spot.

Again, take the irregularly shaped flowers, which are supposed to be the exclusive subjects of insect fertilization; how infinite are the beauties of the flower over and above those which make it conspicuous, or can assist to guide the insect. Take the orchids, for example: the labellum is generally the landing-place of the insect visitors; but the other flower-leaves are almost always the subjects of a vast display of delicate beauty which cannot be accounted for by the necessity of conspicuousness or guidance. All this beauty is, on the theory in question, an unexplained fact.

But, again, take the grasses, which depend for fertilization exclusively on the wind, and have no need to woo the visits of the insects. The beauty of the markings of the inflorescence of many of the grasses is very great, though far from conspicuous: take the delicately banded flowers of our quaking grasses; take the rich crimson of the foxtails; take the brilliant yellow of the Canary Phaleris; and it is impossible to refuse the attribute of beauty in colour to the wind-loving grasses. And all this beauty is unexplained on the theory in question.

It is impossible to speak of the grasses and not to have the mind recalled to the beauty that resides in form as contrasted with colour. Elegance, grace of form, characterizes most (but not all) plants, whether fertilized by the wind or by insects; and yet this grace, in many cases, perhaps in most, adds nothing to their conspicuousness. It is, on the theory in question, a piece of idle beauty; and yet it is all-pervading—a persistent, though not universal, characteristic of the vegetable world.

But to revert to conspicuousness. It is not true to say that all self-fertilized plants have inconspicuous flowers. I have adduced the Stephanotis and Hoya on this point. Nor is it true to say that all anemophilous flowers are inconspicuous as compared with the green of their leaves. The large but delicate yellow groups of the male flowers of the Scotch pine (not to travel beyond very familiar plants) are very conspicuous in the early summer—much more so, to my eye at least, than many flowers which are supposed to stake their lives on attraction by being conspicuous. Hermann Müller has observed on this same fact, and considers it to be clear that the display of colour can be of no use to the plant, and must therefore be regarded as "a merely accidental phenomenon,"[21]—i.e., a phenomenon not accounted for by utility.

The crimson flowers of the larch, again, are certainly very conspicuous as well as beautiful on the yet leafless boughs; and yet they owe nothing to insects.

One other remark must be made on this passage from Mr. Darwin which has formed my text. It does not pretend to account for the production of beauty or even of conspicuousness. It only seeks to account for the accumulation of that quality in certain plants, and its comparative absence in others. The tendency in Nature to produce beauty is a postulate in Mr. Darwin's theory.

The beauty of mountain blossoms has been referred to as supporting the utility of beauty: it is not perfectly clear that even this can be accounted for merely by the need of attracting insects. It is said by the American writer to whom I have already referred, Mr. Meehan, that the flowers of the Rocky Mountains are beautifully coloured, produce as much seed as similar ones elsewhere, and yet that there is a remarkable scarcity of insect life—so great, I understand him to mean, as to render it highly improbable that the races of the flowers can be perpetuated by insect agency.

We have hitherto, according to promise, been considering the beauty of flowers as detached from all surrounding facts, and isolated from all other parts of the plant. But, in fact, this beauty of the inflorescence of plants is only one phenomenon of a much larger class. The petals and sepals are only leaves; and it is difficult to argue about the character of the flower-leaves and omit from thought the stalk and root-leaves; and these leaves continually possess a wealth of beauty both of form and colour for which no intelligible utility has ever been suggested. The use made of conspicuous leaves in the modern style of bedding-out and the cultivation in hot-houses of what are called foliage plants, will recall this to every one. In many cases the stems of plants, often the veins of the leaves, and often the backs of the leaves, are the homes of distinct and beautiful colouring, for which, so far as I know, no account can be given on the score of use. To enlarge our view yet a little more, the brilliant colours of the fungi and of the lichens, mosses, and sea-weeds, and, lastly, the outburst of varied colours in the autumn—the crimson of the bramble, the browns of the oaks, the red of the maple, the gold of the elm, "the sunshine of the withering fern"—all these present themselves to us as so closely akin to the painted beauty of flowers that we cannot think of the one without the other; and we may well hesitate to accept as satisfactory a theory which can offer no explanation of phenomena so closely akin to those of flowers, except, forsooth, that they are merely accidental. Once again, to widen the range of our mental vision, the beauty of the vegetable world is but a part of that great and complex mass of beauty from which we agreed to segregate it; and viewed as part of that, it must have the same explanation applied to it as the other beautiful phenomena of the world.

It is worth while to remember that Beauty is no outcome of a long period of evolution; it is no late event in the geologic history of the world. The lowest forms of organic life no less than the highest are clad in beauty. Many beings that are "simple structureless protoplasm"—to use the language of Professor Allman as President of the British Association this year—"fashion for themselves an outer membraneous or calcareous case, often of symmetrical form and elaborate ornamentation, or construct a silicious skeleton of radiating spicula or crystal-clear concentric spheres of exquisite symmetry and beauty."[22]

So, too, in the Silurian period, the corals and other marine structures were, no doubt, endowed with every grace which could please the eye of man, if he had been there. Beauty is the invariable companion of Nature. It is difficult, therefore, to account for it as a result of evolution; and, as for the theory that it was made for man's delectation only, a single diatom or a single fossil from a Silurian bed is enough to put the whole vain egotism to flight.

What are the results fairly deducible from these observations? They seem to be the following:—

Let us apply these facts to the two rival theories. If, on the one hand, nothing has become beautiful but through the utility of beauty, beauty will be found where it is useful and nowhere else. But we have found beauty without finding utility; so that theory, on our present knowledge, is inadmissible.

If, on the other hand, there be an artificer in Nature who loves at once utility and beauty, he may use the one sometimes as a mean to the other, or he may use beauty without utility; and the presence of beauty without utility is intelligible.

And here I conclude. I see in Nature both utility and beauty; but I am not convinced that the one is solely dependent on the other. I find a grace and a glory (even in the flowers of plants) which, on the utilitarian theory, is not accounted for, is a residual phenomenon; and that in such enormous proportions that the phenomenon explained bears no perceptible proportion to the phenomenon left unexplained. Whether this be so or not, it appears to me, for the reasons I have already given, that we may still entertain the same notions about the beauty of the world as before. Our souls may still rejoice in beauty as of old. To some of us this glorious frame has not appeared a dead mechanic mass, but a living whole, instinct with spiritual life; and in the beauty which we see around us in Nature's face, we have felt the smile of a spiritual Being, as we feel the smile of our friend adding light and lustre to his countenance. I still indulge this fancy, or, if you will, this superstition. Still, as of old, I feel (to use the familiar language of our great poet of Nature)—

"A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts: a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean, and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows and the woods

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth: of all the mighty world,

Of eye, and ear."

Edw. Fry.

[1] Wisdom, xiii. 3-5.

[2] P. 200.

[3] "Origin of Species" (4th Ed.), p. 239.

[4] Wallace, "Tropical Nature," p. 232.

[5] Ibid. p. 232.

[6] Ibid. p. 237.

[7] "Flowers and their Unbidden Guests," by Kerner, translated by Ogle. Prefatory Letter.

[8] Henslow, "On Self-Fertilization." Trans. Linn. Society, 2nd series, "Botany," i. p. 325.
Query: Is not this the case with the Tacsonia of our greenhouses?

[9] Henslow, ubi sup. 329.

[10] Kerner, p. 11. These statements appear to me, though made by a very accomplished observer, to require verification. My own observations on the Colchicum (which have been only very imperfect) would have led me to incline to a different conclusion.

[11] Kerner, p. 12.

[12] Lubbock's "Wild Flowers in Relation to Insects," p. 56.

[13] Lindley, "Veg. King." 436.

[14] "Ueber die Bestaubungsvorrichtungen bei den Fumariaceen," in Pringsheim's "Jahrbuch," vol. vii. part iv. p. 423. 1870.

[15] Link, "Report on Progress of Botany during 1841," translated by Lankester (Ray Society, 1845), p. 65.

[16] Meehan, "On Fertilization by Insect Agency." Gardeners' Chronicle, 11 Sept. 1875.

[17] For the whole subject of these most curious flowers, see Mr. Darwin's book "On the Different Forms of Flowers;" Rev. G. Henslow, Tr. Linn. Society, "Botany," 2nd series, vol. i. p. 317; Mr. Bennett, Journal of Linn. Society, "Botany," xiii. p. 147, xvii. p. 269.

[18] Bennett, Journal of Linn. Society, "Botany," xiii. p. 147.

[19] Meehan, "On Fertilization," ubi supra.

[20] Mr. Bennett, "On Cleistogamous Flowers," Linn. Society's Journal, "Botany," xvii. p. 278, has shown that the latter is probably the correct view.

[21] Nature, ix. 461.

[22] Nature, xx. p. 386.