[IH]Another example of beauty which can hardly be said to have been evolved for beauty's sake is to be seen in birds' eggs. Mr. Henry Seebohm regards the bright colours of some birds' eggs as a difficulty in the way of the current interpretation of organic nature. "Few eggs," he says (Nature, vol. xxxv. p. 237), "are more gorgeously coloured [than those of the guillemot], and no eggs exhibit such a variety of colour. [They are sometimes of a bluish green, marbled or blotched with full brown or black; sometimes white streaked with brown; sometimes pale green or almost white with only the ghosts of blotches and streaks; and sometimes the reddish brown extends so as to form the ground-tint which is blotched with deeper brown.] It is impossible to suppose that protective selection can have produced colours so conspicuous on the white ledges of chalk cliffs; and sexual selection must have been equally powerless. It would be too ludicrous a suggestion to suppose that a cock guillemot fell in love with a plain-coloured hen because he remembered that last season she laid a gay-coloured egg."
If we connect colour with metabolic changes, its occurrence in association with the products of the highly vascular oviduct will not be surprising. Some guidance is, however, on the principles advocated in Chapter VI., required to maintain a standard of coloration. In many cases such guidance is found in protective selection, as in the plover's eggs in our frontispiece. In the guillemot's egg such protective selection seems to be absent, and, as Mr. Seebohm himself says, "no eggs exhibit such a variety of colour."
In our present connection, however, the point to be noticed is that many eggs are undoubtedly beautiful. But they cannot have been in any way selected for the sake of their beauty.
[II]"Outlines of Psychology," p. 537.
[IJ]I should add, "or as conceptual thought."
[IK]This paragraph is quoted from the author's "Springs of Conduct," p. 263.
[IL]Page 347.
[IM]I have said nothing about the emotions of invertebrates, because I have nothing special to say. They have, no doubt, emotions analogous to fear, anger, and so on. But it is difficult to interpret their actions. The "angry" wasp is, perhaps, a good deal more frightened than furious. Sir John Lubbock's interesting experiments seem to show that ants have what is termed the instinct of play. But this admirable observer has rendered it probable that sympathy and affection in ants and bees have been somewhat exaggerated.
[IN]I use the term "incomplete," and not "imperfect," because Mr. Romanes, in his admirable discussion of the subject, applies the term "imperfect instinct" to cases where the instinct is not perfectly adapted to the end in view (see "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 167).
[IO]Macmillan's Magazine, February, 1873. Professor Eimer, in his "Organic Evolution" (English translation, p. 245), narrates similar experiences.