The Idaho world. [volume] (Idaho City, Idaho Territory) 1864-1918, 1871-06-08

ADEQUATE account of the wonderful develop.
ment of animal taste. How did the preferences
of the various tribes of creatures happen
to select harmonies SO perfect, when the rudl1
mentary tastes of partially civilized human
beings seem to select ornament 30 hldeous!
tSurey the problem remains as difficult as ever
namely to account for the sure selection OF
exquisite harmonies of form and color, instead
of the most atrocious discords Put the mind
of the average English barmaid into the hen.
lpheasants. and instead of distinguishing by
their preference the variations tending towards
such bal.and-sOcket .ocelli, they would have
distinguished by their preference variations OF
the s.fulvous' tinge tending in the direction OF
course capstring streaks of yellow, while the
appearance of few red bows in the neigh
borhood would have caused perfect
And instead of the elegant ''eartufs" of certain
thinning birds, such as Mr.. Darwin describes,
they would have influenced the Development In
the direction of heavy ear-drops adopted ex-
pressly to distort the shape of the ear. The
exquisite harmony and graduation OF the var
ious bird-plumage would certainly never have
been produced by the selective preferences of
the lowest order of human beings. How, then,
if Mr.. DarWin's account of the cause OF the
development of beauty be admitted, are we to
account for the sure artistic animal taste which
determined its progress and direction! we
will offer suggestion. Granting that Mr..
Darwin is right in his explanation of the grad
nal growth and accumulation of beautiful COL
Eors and forms in the plumage of birds, through
the preference for those birds which are the
more beautiful and the relative neglect of
those which are less so, it must be plainly con
coded, we think. that some of the lowest ami
NAL orders possess far finer artistic sense
than does uncultipated man even in an ad-
vanced stage of civilization. When we cOnsid-
err the frightful as well rs barbaric ornamental
ton which Sir John Lubbock tells us that saw
age women are compelled to underg0,-as, for
instance, great seams of scars all around their
middle and compare it with the preference
of hen pheasants for the "ellipticornaments" and
the 'ball-and-socket" plumage, we must admit
at once that the hen-pheasants gave far finer
sense of beauty than the Australian males.
Now, we also know that in reference to quite
other eases, the animal instincts are superseded
in man by general development Of reason,
which, for the special purposes of instinct, is.
at first at all events, vastly inferior lnstru-
ment No human reason would suffice to eff
feet what the beaver, and the ant, and the bee
effect by instinct alone The bees power of
building perfectly hexagonal cells may, as Mr..
Darwin has shown, bea developed instinct
since certain wild bees build cells of much
ruder kind; but no one supposes that even the
hexagonal cells are built on strictly geometri-
cal principles, by true bee engineers who have
studied the trigonometry of the subject. And
yet men who have, would be puzzled to build
cells ne-hundredth part as perfect as the bees.
Does not this seem to show that rs reason be-
b. H. T..
and wider power,-the power OF laying the in
basis of our own rules,-at the ex-
oense OF great specific loss of practical skill
And may not something of the same kind be |
rue of the sense of beautyl If Mr. Darwin
$ right as to the principle which stimulates
he elaboration of beauty by the lower animals,
loes not the Creator give the lower order OF
animals an instinct of beauty ready made,
\ hich we lose as we become competent to ap-
,rehend its laws, and which we only recover
~ mastering consciously those laws of harmo-
~ which the bird and even tho fish apprehend
Yet If this be true account
" the matter. this instructive selection of the
beautiful leads To theological inference
,ood way beyond that warranted by the Sc
ection of the useful Of course, with regard
o the natural selection of notifications useful
o the creature which undergoes those modifi-
ations, it may be said that they are merely
he sarrirors of thousands of notifications
which are lost out OF sight merely because
hey were injurious or different But with re-
ard to the selection of the beautiful, this can
ot be said If there were any race of birds
which really preferred pure ugliuess,-there
night and must be a natural selection Of ugli-
ess of which we suppose there is no race.
Hence. the instructive taste for beauty in the
,ird which is SO much greater than that of
alfeducated human beings, and which is only
ainfully recovered through the aborious study
f Nature by educated intellgences, must
ONE from a fountain of infinite love of beauty,
nd cannot by any possibility be the mere re-
ult of competitive struggle for existence
mong animals quite unconscious whittier the
'sue Of that struggle tends.
A DISGUISED FATIiER.-The editor of the
eekskill Advertiser has received the following