Origin of Species Variorum

obviously depends on the mind of man, irrespective of any real quality in the admired object; and that the idea is not an innate and unalterable element in the mind. We see this in men of different races admiring an entirely different standard of beauty in their women; neither the Negro nor the Chinese admires the Caucasian beau-ideal. ↑ The idea also of beauty in natural scenery has arisen only within modern times. On the view of beautiful objects having been created for man's gratification, it ought to be shown that there was less beauty on the face of the earth before man appeared than since he came on the stage. Were the beautiful volute and cone shells of the Eocene epoch, and the gracefully sculptured ammonites of the Secondary period, created that man might ages afterwards admire them in his cabinet? Few objects are more beautiful than the minute siliceous cases of the diatomaceæ: were these created that they might be examined and admired under the higher powers of the microscope? The beauty in this latter case, and in many others, is apparently wholly due to symmetry of growth. Flowers 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 fertilisation might be favoured. I have come to this conclusion from finding it an invariable rule that when a flower is fertilised 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