| → and some other insects, 1866 1869 |
| OMIT 1872 |
|
| → not for the delight of man, but 1866 1869 |
| OMIT 1872 |
|
| → their less ornamented females. 1866 1869 |
| the females, and not for the delight of man. 1872 |
|
| ↑ 3 blocks not present in 1859 1860 1861 1866 1869; present in 1872 |
| How the sense of beauty in its simplest form— that is, the reception of a peculiar kind of pleasure from certain colours, forms, and sounds— was first developed in the mind of man and of the lower animals, is a very obscure subject.
The same sort of difficulty is presented, if we enquire how it is that certain flavours and odours give pleasure, and others displeasure.
Habit in all these cases appears to have come to a certain extent into play; but there must be some fundamental cause in the constitution of the nervous system in each species.
|
|
| ↑ 1 blocks not present in 1859 1860 1861 1869 1872; present in 1866 |
| We can sometimes plainly see the proximate cause of the transmission of ornaments to the males alone; for a pea-hen with the long tail of the male bird would be badly fitted to sit on her eggs, and a coal-black female capercailzie would be far more conspicuous on her nest and more exposed to danger than in her present modest attire.
|
|
|
host of magnificently coloured
→and some other insects,
have been rendered beautiful for
sake; but this has been effected
→not for the delight of man, but
through sexual selection, that
the more beautiful males having been continually preferred by
→their less ornamented females. So it is with the music of birds. We may infer from all this that a
taste for beautiful colours and for musical sounds runs through a large part of the animal kingdom. When the female is as beautifully coloured as the male, which is not rarely the case with birds and butterflies, the cause
lies in the colours acquired through sexual selection having been
both sexes, instead of
the males alone. In some instances, however, the acquirement of conspicuous colours by the female may have been checked through natural selection, on account of the danger to which she would thus have been exposed during incubation. ↑ ↑
|
|
| Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in
species exclusively for the good of another species; though throughout nature one species incessantly takes advantage of, and profits by, the
of
But natural selection can and does often produce structures for the direct injury of other
as we see in the fang of the adder, and in the ovipositor of the ichneumon, by which its eggs are
in the living bodies of other insects. If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection. Although many statements may be found in works on natural history to this effect, I cannot find even one which seems to me of any weight. It is admitted that the rattlesnake has a poison-fang for its own
|
