Grant Allen

“ For a minute or two it stands and waits till the air it breathes has filled out its wings, and till the warmth and sunlight have given it strength. For the wings are by origin a part of the breathing apparatus, and they require to be plimmed by the air before the insect can take to flight. Then, as it grows more accustomed to its new life, the hereditary impulse causes it to spread its vans abroad, and it flies. Soon a flower catches its eye, and the bright mass of colour attracts it irresistibly, as the candle-light attracts the eye of a child a few weeks old. ”

“ Probably the most forlorn and abject creature to be seen on the face of the earth is a masterless dog. Slouching and slinking along, cringing to every human being it chances to meet, running away with its tail between its legs from smaller dogs whom under other circumstances it would accost with a gruff who-the-dickens-are-you sort of growl,—it forms the very picture of utter humiliation and self-abasement. ”

“ It is true, mere glossy greenness may, and often does, make up for the want of variety, as we see in the arum, holly, laurel, and hart's-tongue fern; but the leaves which we admire most of all are those which, like maidenhair, are both exquisitely green and delicately designed in shape. So that, in the last resort, the beauty of leaves, like the beauty of coast scenery, is really due to the constant interaction of a vast number of natural laws, not to any distinct aesthetic intention on the part of Nature. ”

“ The butterfly in like manner is attracted automatically by the colour of his proper flowers, and settling upon them, sucks up their honey instinctively. But feeding is not now his only object in life: he has to find and pair with a suitable mate. That, indeed, is the great end of his winged existence. Here, again, his simple nervous system stands him in good stead. The picture of his kind is, as it were, imprinted on his little brain, and he knows his own mates the moment he sees them, just as intuitively as he knows the flowers upon which he must feed. ”

“ As it stands just at present, the dull outer sides of its four wings are alone displayed, so that it does not form a conspicuous mark for passing birds; but when it has drunk up the last drop of honey from the thistle flower, and flits joyously away to seek another purple mass of the same sort, it will open its red-spotted vans in the sunlight, and will then show itself off as one among the prettiest of our native insects. ”

“ If we could only thread the labyrinth of a dog's brain, we should find somewhere in it a group of correlated nerve-connections answering to this universal habit of his race; and the group in question would be quite without any analogous mechanism in the brain of the ancestral wolf. As truly as the wing of the bird is adapted to its congenital instinct of flying, as truly as the nervous system of the bee is adapted to its congenital instinct of honeycomb building, just so truly is the brain of the dog adapted to its now congenital instinct of following and obeying a master. ”

“ The parent fish ascend to the head-waters of their native river during the autumn season to spawn, and then, their glory dimmed, they return down-stream to the deep pools, where they pass the winter sulkily, as if ashamed to show themselves in their dull and dusky suits. But when spring comes round once more, and flies again become abundant, the trout begin to move up-stream afresh, and soon fatten out to their customary size and brilliant colours. ”

“ One butterfly can tell its mates at once from a thousand other species, though it may differ from some of them only by a single spot or line, which would escape the notice of all but the most attentive observers. Must we not conclude that there are elements in the butterfly's feeble brain exactly answering to the blank picture of its specific type? So, too, must we not suppose that in every race of animals there arises a perceptive structure specially adapted to the recognition of its own kind? Babies notice human faces long before they notice any other living thing. ”

“ An oak tree in full foliage is a magnificent group of such separate individuals—a whole nation in miniature: it may be compared to a branched coral polypedom covered with a thousand little insect workers, while each leaf answers rather to the separate polypes themselves. The leaves are even capable of producing new individuals by what they contribute to the buds on every branch; and the seeds which the tree as a whole produces are to be looked upon rather as the founders of fresh colonies, like the swarms of bees, than as fresh individuals alone. ”

“ As soon as the insect spies such a cluster, the colour seems to act as a stimulant to his broad wings, just as the candle-light does to those of his cousin the moth. Off he sails at once, as if by automatic action, towards the distant patch, and there both robs the plant of its honey and at the same time carries to it on his legs and head fertilising pollen from the last of its congeners which he favoured with a call. For of course both bees and butterflies stick on the whole to a single species at a time ”

“ There are few things in nature more interesting to notice than these constant survivals of instinctive habits in altered circumstances. They are to the mental life what rudimentary organs are to the bodily structure: they remind us of an older order of things, just as the abortive legs of the blind-worm show us that he was once a lizard, and the hidden shell of the slug that he was once a snail. ”

“ It is one of the most thorough-going parasites in all nature. Ordinary green-leaved plants live by making starches for themselves out of the carbonic acid in the air, under the influence of sunlight; but the dodder simply fastens itself on to another plant, sends down rootlets or suckers into its veins, and drinks up sap stored with ready-made starches or other foodstuffs, originally destined by its host for the supply of its own growing leaves, branches, and blossoms. It lives upon the gorse just as parasitically as the little green aphides live upon our rose-bushes. ”

“ Abstract ideas are not likely to play a large part in apian consciousness. A bee has a very perfect eye, and with this eye it can see not only form, but also colour, as Sir John Lubbock's experiments have shown us. The information which it gets through its eye, coupled with other ideas derived from touch, smell, and taste, no doubt makes up the main thinkable and knowable universe as it reveals itself to the apian intelligence. To ourselves and to bees alike the world is, on the whole, a coloured picture, with the notions of distance and solidity thrown in by touch and muscular effort ”

“ Besides, flowers are so pretty, and we cultivate them so largely, with little regard to the leaves, that they have come to usurp almost the entire interest of botanists and horticulturists alike. Darwinism itself has only heightened this exclusive interest by calling attention to the reciprocal relations which exist between the honey-bearing blossom and the fertilising insect, the bright-coloured petals and the myriad facets of the butterfly's eye. ”

“ Wherever in nature we find pure colour, symmetrical form, and intricate variety of pattern, we imagine to ourselves that nature designs the object to be beautiful. When we trace these peculiarities to their origin, however, we find that each of them owes its occurrence to some special fact in the history of the object; and we are forced to conclude that the notion of intentional design has been read into it by human analogies. All nature is beautiful, and most beautiful for those in whom the sense of beauty is most highly developed ”

“ On the other hand, when a seed-vessel survives by escaping the notice of animals, it generally has a sweet and pleasant kernel, which it protects by a hard shell and an inconspicuous and nauseous envelope. If the kernel itself is bitter, as with the horse-chestnut, the need for disguise and external protection is much lessened. But the best illustration of all is seen in the West Indian cashew-nut, which is what Alice in Wonderland would have called a portmanteau seed-vessel—a fruit and a nut rolled into one. ”

“ Their want of minute subdivision, their monotonous outline, their dull surface, all make them ugly in our eyes, just as the flatness of the Cornish plain makes it also ugly to us. Where symmetry is slightly marked and variety wanting, as in the cabbage leaf, the mullein, and the burdock, we see little or nothing to admire. On the other hand, ferns generally grow in hedge-rows or thickets, where sunlight is much interrupted by other plants, and where air is scanty, most of its carbon being extracted by neighbouring plants which leave but little for one another's needs. ”

“ It might seem at first sight that creatures so humble as these little fish could hardly have sufficiently developed aesthetic tastes to prefer one mate above another on the score of beauty. But we must remember that every species is very sensitive to small points of detail in its own kind, and that the choice would only be exerted between mates generally very like one another, so that extremely minute differences must necessarily turn the scale in favour of one particular suitor rather than his rivals. ”

“ For we must never forget that all plants mainly grow, not, as most people suppose, from the earth, but from the air. They are for the most part mere masses of carbon-compounds, and the carbon in them comes from the carbonic acid diffused through the atmosphere around, and is separated by the sunlight acting in the leaves. There it mixes with small quantities of hydrogen and nitrogen brought by the roots from soil and water; and the starches or other bodies thus formed are then conveyed by the sap to the places where they will be required in the economy of the plant system. ”

“ Finally, if we look at the sense of taste, we find an equally curious agreement between men and insects; for the honey which is stored by the flower for the bee, and by the bee for its own use, is stolen and eaten up by man instead. Hence, when I consider the general continuity of nervous structure throughout the whole animal race, and the exact similarity of the stimulus in each instance, I can hardly doubt that the butterfly really enjoys life somewhat as we enjoy it, though far less vividly. I cannot but think that he finds honey sweet, and perfumes pleasant, and colour attractive ”

“ There is a white potentilla so like a strawberry blossom that even a botanist must look closely at the plant before he can be sure of its identity. While they are in flower the two heads remain almost indistinguishable; but when the seed begins to set the potentilla develops only a collection of dry fruitlets, seated upon a green receptacle, the bed or soft expansion which hangs on to the 'hull' or calyx. ”

“ Among a few dogs, like those of Constantinople, the instinct may have died out by disuse, as the eyes of cave animals have atrophied for want of light; but when a dog has once been brought up from puppyhood under a master, the instinct is fully and freely developed, and the masterless condition is thenceforth for him a thwarting and disappointing of all his natural feelings and affections.
Not only have dogs as a class acquired a special instinct with regard to humanity generally, but particular breeds of dogs have acquired particular instincts with regard to certain individual acts. ”

“ You may there behold evolution actually illustrating the transformation of life under your very eyes: you may watch a low type of gill-breathing gristly-boned fish developing into the highest form of lung-breathing terrestrial amphibian. Nay, more—you may almost discover the earliest known ancestor of the whole vertebrate kind, the first cousin of that once famous ascidian larva, passing through all the upward stages of existence which finally lead it to assume the shape of a relatively perfect four-legged animal. ”

“ You and I and our ancestors have had but little occasion for sniffing and scenting; our sight and our touch have done duty as chief intelligencers from the outer world; and the nerves of smell, with their connected centres, have withered away to the degenerate condition in which they now are. Consequently, smell plays but a small part in our thought and our memories. The world that we know is chiefly a world of sights and touches. But in the brain of dog, or deer, or antelope, smell is a prevailing faculty ”

“ Just as a flower garden has been intentionally produced by man, so flowers have been unconsciously produced by insects. As a rule, all bright red, blue, or orange in nature (except in the rare case of gems) is due to animal selection, either of flowers, fruits, or mates. Thus we may say that beauty in the inorganic world is always accidental; but in the organic world it is sometimes accidental and sometimes designed. A waterfall is a mere result of geological and geographical causes, but a bluebell or a butterfly is partly the result of a more or less deliberate æsthetic choice. ”

“ An orange or a plum is brightly tinted with hues which contrast strongly with the surrounding foliage; its pleasant taste and soft pulp all advertise it for the notice of birds or monkeys, as a means for assisting in the dispersion of its seed. But a nut, on the contrary, is a fruit whose actual seed contains an abundance of oils and other pleasant food-stuffs, which must be carefully guarded against the depredations of possible foes. In the plum or the orange we do not eat the seed itself: we only eat the surrounding pulp. But in the walnut the part which we utilise is the embryo plant itself ”

“ But above water, as below it, the crowfoot remains in principle a crowfoot still. The traditions of its race, acquired in damp marshy meadows, not actually under water, cling to it yet in spite of every change. Born river and pond plants which rise to the surface, like the water-lily or the duck-weed, have broad floating leaves that contrast strongly with the waving filaments of wholly submerged species. They can find plenty of food everywhere, and as the sunlight falls flat upon them, they may as well spread out flat to catch the sunlight. ”

“ The origin of the pretty speckles is probably to be found in the constant selection by the fish of the most beautiful among their number as mates. Just as singing birds are in their fullest and clearest song at the nesting period, and just as many brilliant species only possess their gorgeous plumage while they are going through their courtship, and lose the decoration after the young brood is hatched, so the trout are most brightly coloured at spawning time, and become lank and dingy after the eggs have been safely deposited. ”

“ We choose the best ratter among our terriers, the best pointer, retriever, or setter among other breeds, to become the parents of our future stock. We thus half unconsciously select particular types of nervous system in preference to others. Once upon a time we used even to rear a race of dogs with a strange instinct for turning the spit in our kitchens; and to this day the Cubans rear blood-hounds with a natural taste for hunting down the trail of runaway negroes. Now, everybody knows that you cannot teach one sort of dog the kind of tricks which come by instinct to a different sort. ”

“ When we recollect that even so late an acquisition as articulate speech in human beings has its special physical seat in the brain, it is not astonishing that complicated mechanisms should have arisen among animals for the due perception of mates, food, and foes respectively. Thus, doubtless, the serpent form has imprinted itself indelibly on the senses of monkeys, and the wolf or dog form on those of cows: so that even with a young ape or calf the sight of these their ancestral enemies at once calls up uneasy or terrified feelings in their half-developed minds. ”