Origin of Species Variorum

rank amongst the most beautiful productions of nature; and they have become through natural selection beautiful, or rather conspicuous in contrast with the green leaves, that they might easily be 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. Hence we may 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 we now see on our firs, oaks, nut and ash trees, on grasses, spinach, docks, and nettles. A similar line of argument holds good with the many kinds of beautiful fruits; that a ripe strawberry or cherry is as pleasing to the eye as to the palate, that the gaily-coloured fruit of the spindle-wood tree and the scarlet berries of the holly are beautiful objects, will be admitted by every one. But this beauty serves merely as a guide to birds and beasts, that the fruit may be devoured and the manured seeds thus disseminated: I infer that this is the case from having as yet found in every instance that seeds, which are embedded within a fruit of any kind, that is within a fleshy or pulpy envelope, if it be coloured of any brilliant tint, or merely rendered conspicuous by being .. white or black, are always disseminated by being first devoured.

On the other hand, I willingly admit that a great number of male animals, as all our most gorgeous birds, .. some fishes, some mammals, and a