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stant and persistent force, tending continually to one end, and that is the multiplication of the individual which is stronger or better armed. On the other hand there is caprice or fancy, which is uncertain as the wind in its action upon ourselves, and which, if our experience be worth anything, has a tendency to vary with each individual. How the action of this quality in individuals during a long course of ages could have resulted in the constant colours and forms in males and females, which, according to Mr. Darwin, are of no good to the individual, rather than have brought about an infinite variety within the limit of each species, is a difficulty with which Mr. Darwin cannot possibly grapple. Caprice is certainly present in the higher animals; but so uncertain an agent could never have produced an uniform result, whether it be of form or of colour. We will examine the argument as to colour.

Beauty of colour is very generally found throughout the animal kingdom, and is essentially of the same kind. The gorgeous tints of a sea-anemone or of a coral, or the lustrous sheen on the hairs of a sea-slug or on the interior of an ear-shell, are as beautiful as the stripes of a tiger or the splendour of a bird of paradise. None could maintain for a moment that there is the slightest difference between them as works of art. In some cases the design of colouring is the same in the higher and lower classes of the animal kingdom. In the cone-shells, for instance, the contrast between the black stripes and reddish back-ground of the tiger's skin is exactly followed, and among the endless varieties of the cowry, some are ornamented with the same colours as some of the antelopes. It is only reasonable to account for this identity on the hypothesis that like results have been produced by similar causes, and that whatever may be the explanation of the colours of one class of organisms, ought also to explain the presence of similar colours in the other class. Mr. Darwin, however, with a strange want of logic, denies this. In the case of the lower animals, such as sea-anemones, corals, and others which either present no sexual differences or are hermaphrodite, he believes that colours are the direct result of the chemical nature, or the minute structure of their tissues, independently of any benefit thus derived— The tints of the decaying leaves in an American 'forest are described by everyone as gorgeous; yet no one 'supposes that these tints are of the least advantage to the trees. Bearing in mind how many substances closely analogous to natural organic compounds have been recently formed by chemists, and which exhibit the most splendid colours, it

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'would have been a strange fact if substances similarly coloured had not often originated, independently of any useful end being thus gained, in the complex laboratory of living or ganisms.' Thus a large division of the animal kingdom is taken out of the category both of natural and sexual selection, and relegated to that which is of unknown causation. With the higher animals, according to Mr. Darwin, the case is very different; for with them, when one sex is much more brilliantly or conspicuously coloured than the other, and there is no difference in the habits of the two sexes which will account ' for this difference, we have reason to believe in the influence ' of sexual selection; and this belief is strongly confirmed when the more ornamented individuals, which are almost always the males, display their attractions before the other sex. We 'may also extend this conclusion to both sexes, when coloured alike, if their colours are perfectly analogous to those of one sex alone in certain other species of the same group.' The very fact that beauty of colour is found equally distributed among the lower animals where there could be no sexual selection, implies that in the higher animals also it could not have been the result of sexual selection. There is, doubtless, connexion between splendour of colour and sexual functions in all the higher animals, as in the case of the male stickleback, described by Mr. Warrington as being beautiful beyond description during the breeding season- The back and eyes of the female are simply brown, and the belly white; the eyes of the male, on the other hand, are of the most splendid green, having a metallic lustre like the green feathers of some humming birds. The throat and belly are of a bright crimson, the back of an ashy green, and the whole fish appears as though it were somewhat translucent and glowed with an internal incandescence' (vol. ii. p. 14). It is absurd to suppose that this remarkable transformation is caused by the female stickleback choosing her partners for millions of generations with a special view to brilliancy of colour.

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Animals are variously affected by different colours, being attracted by some and repelled by others; but this does not prove that their partners owe their tints to the taste of the opposite sex. Mr. Darwin's argument, derived from the fact that splendidly coloured males show off their beauty to the females, loses point from the circumstance that they will also show off to their fellow males, as in the case of grouse, or to spectators, as in the case of peacocks, which frequently exhibit their splendid tails to the unsympathetic eyes of pigs, horses, and cows.

We do not deny that the higher animals

exert some choice in their courtship, but we deny that Mr. Darwin has advanced proof that the beautiful colours of the males in the higher animals are due to sexual selection. In the present state of knowledge, we must confess our ignorance of the vera causa; but whatever it may be, we may fairly infer that it must explain the tinting of shells and corals, and the lower animals, as well as that of the higher classes of the animal kingdom, the exquisite painting of a turbo, which during life is concealed beneath the thick epidermis, as well as the glories of a peacock. Mr. Darwin professes his inability to conceive the purpose of the beauty which pervades the organic creation, if it be not subservient to the reproduction of race. But is the beauty of creation confined to organic beings? Does it not extend to the crystal and the gem drawn from the deepest mines? Does it not beam in every ray of light which flashes over sky or sea? Does it not fill the firmament, and clothe the earth? What matters it to explain by some idle theory the colours on the back of a caterpillar, when the whole universe is replete with the same marvellous hues, symmetry, and grace?

Mr. Darwin has told us some amusing stories of the loves of the animals-the lady spider, that fell upon and ate up her lover, to the unspeakable horror of the beholder; the seal which bows to his lady love till he has got her within range of his teeth; the coquetry of the Thysanura-are perfect of their kind; but he has not advanced a shadow of proof that sexual selection is capable of producing the changes of form and colour which he attributes to it. To the truth of his view it is necessary to show that taste in the species has always flowed in one definite direction, without any of that fickleness which we associate with the idea of taste. He must also show that animals possess instinctive love of beauty and of positive ugliness, judged according to our standard. These two essentials to his theory he assumes without any attempt at proof. Throughout the treatise on sexual selection Mr. Darwin is continually committing the error which he pointed out in his first volume-that of treating the productions of animals as if they flowed from the same qualities as would be necessarily implied if they were our own. Because birds are beautiful, and build beautiful nests, he argues that they possess the same æsthetic taste as we ourselves under the highest culture:

'The best evidence, however, of a taste for the beautiful is afforded by the three genera of the Australian bower-birds already mentioned. Their bowers, where the sexes congregate and play strange antics, are differently constructed, but what most concerns us is, that they are

decorated in a different manner by the different species. The satin bower-bird collects gaily-coloured articles, such as the blue tail-feathers of parakeets, bleached bones and shells, which it sticks between the twigs, or arranges at the entrance. Mr. Gould found in one bower a neatly-worked stone tomahawk and a slip of blue cotton, evidently procured from a native encampment. These objects are continually rearranged, and carried about by the birds whilst at play. The bower of the spotted bower-bird is beautifully lined with tall grasses, so disposed that the heads nearly meet, and the decorations are very profuse. Round stones are used to keep the grass-stems in their proper places, and to make divergent paths leading to the bower. The stones and shells are often brought from a great distance. The regentbird, as described by Mr. Ramsay, ornaments its short bower with bleached land-shells belonging to five or six species, and with berries of various colours, blue, red, and black, which give it, when fresh, a very pretty appearance. Besides these, there were several newlypicked leaves and young shoots of a pinkish colour, the whole showing a decided taste for the beautiful. Well may Mr. Gould say these highly-decorated halls of assembly must be regarded as the most wonderful instances of bird architecture yet described, and the taste, as we see, of the several species certainly differs.' (Vol. ii. p. 112.)

There is surely no more evidence that these birds build nests from æsthetic motives than that beavers build their dams from their knowledge of the principles of applied mechanics. If the exquisite beauty of birds, taking them as an example, be merely the result of the reaction of the aesthetic faculties on the plumage of their partners, we may as well at once give up the attempt to compete with them in the department of taste. Our noblest painters cannot hope to reproduce the tints of a humming-bird's feather. Can we hope, after struggling after the higher culture for generations, and having our love for the beautiful obtained by education, and transformed into an instinct by inheritance, to attain to the æsthetic cultusshall we say? of a female argus-pheasant. In our present state we are in that respect infinitely inferior to the lower animals on the hypothesis. To treat animals as if they were men and women is little less than absurd. Moreover, were beauty the result of sexual selection, it ought to be manifested in the highest degree in the highest animals, since a sense of the beautiful is to a large extent dependent on intellectual development. This could not be maintained by Mr. Darwin, or by any other naturalist. From whatever point of view the theory is examined, it is altogether inconsistent with known facts.

Inferences might not unfairly be drawn from this portion of Mr. Darwin's work, to which we cannot in this place do more than advert. But we do him no injustice in ascribing to him the theory of Lucretius-that Venus is the creative power

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the world, and that the mysterious law of reproduction, with the passions which belong to it, is the dominant force of life. He appears to see nothing beyond it or above it. In a heathen poet such doctrines appear gross and degrading, if not vicious. We know not how to characterise them in an English naturalist, well known for the purity and elevation of his own life and character.

We must now conclude our remarks on this subject of absorbing interest. Never, perhaps, in the history of philosophy, have such wide generalisations been derived from such a small basis of fact. Mr. Darwin's theory of the growth of the moral sense and of the intellectual faculty is unsupported by any proof; and the very corner-stone of the hypothesis, that the human mind is identical in kind with that of the brutes, is a mere assumption opposed alike to experience and philosophy. The view of sexual selection is greatly exaggerated, and altogether inadequate to explain the differences between the sexes. In a word, Mr. Darwin has chosen this crucial test of the truth of natural selection, and it has broken down at every point where it has been tried. Mr. Wallace, treating of the general question of the evolution of life, takes very much the same view as Mr. Darwin, but he allows that Man cannot be accounted for by the theory. Yet both these authors have upon the whole done good to science by making people think; and the results of that thought will be, in our belief, not the blind acceptance of their views, but a realisation of the truth, that whatever the doctrine of evolution may be worth, so far as relates to man's body, man's intellect and moral sense are now, as they ever were, inscrutable from the point of view offered by natural history; and only to be comprehended from far higher considerations, to which, as a mere naturalist, Mr. Darwin has not attained.

ART. VIII.-Land Tenure Reports. Denmark: 1870. By Mr. STRACHEY. Published by the Foreign Office.

IT may seem premature at this moment to discuss any

question of foreign politics beyond the immediate consequences of the great conflict which Europe has lately witnessed. To appreciate its influence on the internal development and constitution of Germany, to guess at the time which France will take in recovering from the heavy blows under which she still reels, may well be deemed sufficient task for the attention

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