Magnified Transverse Section of Spore-bearing Receptacle of Fucus vesiculosus.
The third section is made across one of the spore-bearing receptacles which tip—as yellow warty excrescences—the flat olive fronds of the common bladder-weed, Fucus vesiculosus, so common in dense meadows everywhere on our shores. The interior, filled with mucus, is traversed by a network of jointed fibres, which communicate with the spherical conceptacles immersed in the outer substance, and containing the spores and the antheridia. That there are other and many sections far more intricate and beautiful any one can testify who has ever turned over the fine plates of Professor Harvey’s “Phycologia Britannica,” his admirable papers in the publications of the Smithsonian Society, or the noble folio volume of Postel and Ruprecht; but in these simple ones here given—and selected on that very account—we find Nature contriving elegant and pleasing devices by the mere repetition and combination of the circle, the hexagon, or the pentagon, and producing by such means a pleasing unity and richness of effect instead of a sameness or a poverty. At any rate, whenever Nature does produce a beautiful object, we shall never be the worse for examining the principles by which she has worked, and it is in the least complicated that we must first hope to find the rudimentary laws of her beauty-building. With rule and compass we can excel her in accuracy—with reason, experience, and remembrance, we can improve upon her labours in our artificial productions; but, notwithstanding the many exquisite objects of art produced by our modern jewellers, there is by far too much conventionality and routine in the more ordinary bijouterie of every-day wear; and we might from such sections alone acquire many novelties in the setting of gems, pearls, and pebbles, as well as gain many advantages over the arbitrary whims of an unguided, although it may be a cultivated, mind. Not only might the real be thus improved by adopting the mathematical solids or traceries thus suggested, but there are numerous articles of mock jewellery in which shells, fictitious agates, and inferior cameos are largely used, the designers for which might be advantageously employed for a season by the seaside, where their eyes would become accustomed to the sober olive of the weeds; and it might then be found that a bronze setting would not only be more truthful, but more useful and chaste, than a hypocritical gilt surface, that reveals at every touch the baser metal beneath. And here, with these few words of explanation and suggestion, for the present let me leave this unworked vein—merely adding that the longitudinal sections are as fanciful as the transverse, and in viewing the latter we may oftentimes imagine we are examining fairy ribands and laces of the most delicate texture.
But however complicated the combinations of the cellular and vascular tissues become as we ascend in the scale of creation, the development of forms and tints in every natural object is as dependent upon fixed laws as the beauty and colouring of a picture on the skill and innate genius of the artist. Few artists, however, if any, work by rule; in their studies they attain instinctively, as it were, a conceptive knowledge of the beautiful; they find Nature ever varying, and they find variety the source of beauty; they find that an object composed of lines contrasts pleasantly with circles; that the upraised hands of a speaker should be opposed by the folded arms of the listeners—the energetic by the prostrate; and so they go on, acquiring a science by perception, of which the more ethereal portion has never yet been reduced to written rules, and is so subtle that perhaps it never will be. That designers work more usually by their innate taste and their manual skill is evinced by the many elegant absurdities that one constantly meets.
And now I would arrest the first objection that could be raised against the sea-weeds as objects of design—their inapplicability on the ground of appropriateness. There is an appropriateness, the world will say, about flowers; they have a language of their own, in which they speak the rarest poetry; the saints of all the days of the year have their dedications of these gems of the fields; the nymphs of the forest and dell, the Naiades and mythological celestials without end have patronised them; besides, it is so natural to paper our walls with roses, to have garlands woven in our dresses; and our maidens only deck their hair with the artificial because the real will fade. What more proper than a plate of leaves for fruit, or a decanter ornamented with grapes? True; but what more absurd than a vase of cabbage-leaves supported on the flourishing tails of twisted dolphins; or a jug composed of a gigantic head, from which we pour the contents through the perforated body of a swan, with its neck immersed in a sturdy flag, and of such reversed proportions and of such diminutive size that a whole flock might roost in the interior of an egg, without any of them experiencing that unpleasant inconvenience which nursery rhymes attribute to the old lady who lived in the shoe? These are broad absurdities, although the objects themselves may be elegant and of costly ware: thus showing at once that the grace of natural objects is dependent upon the laws of mathematical form, for there is nothing in the subjects we have noticed to interest—no hidden allusion—and all that is pleasing arises from the lines of contour. But there are more subtle misapplications, which ordinarily escape detection. Is it quite correct to bind the tendrils of the vine round the unpretending jugs which are dedicated to the pure fluid of the teetotaler, or those that are charged with foaming ale? to defend our butter with a belt of hissing snakes, or pass jets of sweet water through fountains of gigantic cockle-shells and marine monsters? And yet many of these things we constantly forgive; then surely we might extend some of that mercy, if they required it, to the sea-weeds, which we do not withhold from reptiles, especially if it can be shown that they are available for more artistic purposes than for pretty picture-making in albums and herbaria, or for fancy baskets, with a hackneyed apologetic legend, in bazaars.
Ulva linza.
It cannot be expected that the designer should carry on the laborious researches of the man of science, or make the delicate sections which the naturalist finds necessary for the determination of species and the comprehension of the phenomena of structure and vitality; that he should have one eye for the microscope, and the other for his pencil; nor that the philosopher should have all the accomplishments of the artist; but as the boundless universe is dependent upon everything that exists for its unity and harmony, so art cannot neglect even natural sciences with impunity, for, at least, every branch is capable of adding an expression or a charm. Pardon, therefore, the simple belief that even the rudiments of vegetable structure and the section of a sea-weed or a plant are not unworthy of inspection for artistic purposes, and that they may suggest, if not actually exhibit, exquisite combinations of mathematical figures which are not inappropriate decorative ornaments for most varied purposes.
Fucus nodosus.
Along high-water mark, as high as the spray bedews the rugged beds of stone, grow the green confervæ; within the tidal zone is the territory of the olive fuci; and the deep is the home of the red weeds, sometimes to be found at dead low water, and even higher on the shore, in like manner as algæ of vivid green are traced to depths of thirty, forty, and even fifty fathoms; for although the rules hold generally good, there are exceptions—as it is said there must be to all rules, to prevent their becoming axioms. Such, too, of olive, red, and green, is the artificial arrangement by which botanists have classified the algæ, the colours and characters being sufficiently associated and distinctive for even scientific grouping.