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rank amongst the most beautiful productions of nature;
they have
→become through natural selection beautiful, or rather
conspicuous in contrast with the
→green leaves,
that they
observed
by
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.
plants habitually produce two kinds of flowers; one kind open and coloured so as to attract insects; the other
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,
would not have been decked with beautiful flowers, but would have produced only such poor flowers as
→we now see on
our
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
that the gaily-coloured fruit of the spindle-wood tree and the scarlet berries of the holly are beautiful
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
are
→embedded
within a fruit of any
is within a fleshy or pulpy
if it be coloured of any brilliant tint, or
rendered conspicuous by being
white or
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