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]