Chapter XI: BRANTWOOD, 14th September, 1879 (2)

The ink which recorded this solemn pledge was hardly dry before it had been broken. The predetermined war with Shere Ali began in the wanton manner I have told, and the question of cost was mentioned in the Houses of Parliament. The British Imperialist glories in war when the chances are all in his favour, but he has an invincible objection to paying the costs of such transactions. And they are costly. It was therefore very necessary so to arrange matters, that while the glory of hunting an ally to death should be appropriated by British Imperialism, the expenses of the chase should be defrayed by India. Accordingly, towards the end of November, Lord Cranbrook informed the House of Lords that India was in possession of a surplus more than sufficient to defray the costs of the war:--

"I am bound to say, that _after looking very carefully into
the financial condition of India_, I believe it will not
be necessary, at least in the initial steps, to call on the
revenues of England. I am in possession of facts which, I
think, would convince your Lordships that, _without unduly
pressing on the resources of India_, there will be no
necessity to call on the English revenues--at least during the
present financial year. It was announced by my noble friend in
another place the other night that, _including the £1,500,000
of new taxes_, the surplus of Indian revenue will amount to
£2,136,000."

A fortnight later the "facts" of which Lord Cranbrook professed to be in possession were discovered not to be facts, and the surplus was reduced by Mr. Stanhope to a million and a half--in other words, to exactly the sum which Lord Lytton had solemnly pledged his honour to apply to no purpose except that of insuring India against the ravages of famine. On the most elastic system of interpretation, the acquisition of a fictitious "scientific frontier" cannot be made to appear as a fulfilment of this pledge. However, on the faith of the surplus thus created by Lord Cranbrook and Mr. Stanhope, Parliament voted that the expenses of the Afghan war should be charged upon India. Mr. Stanhope said,--" The surplus being of the amount he had mentioned, it must be perfectly obvious that the Indian Government could pay the whole cost of the war during the present year, without adding a shilling to the taxation or the debt of the country."

The intention here is sufficiently obvious. Lord Cranbrook and Mr. Stanhope were quite prepared to disregard the pledges given to the people of India, and apply the Famine Insurance Fund to an illegitimate purpose. They had all the will to do this, but their desires were frustrated by the fact that there was no such fund in existence. It had already been spent and disappeared. Lord Lytton thus calmly announces its extinction in the Budget resolution of March, 1879:--

"The insurance provided against future famines has virtually
ceased to exist, and the difficulties in the way of fiscal
and commercial and administrative reform have been greatly
aggravated. Nor can it be in any way assumed that the
evil will not continue and go on increasing. Under such
circumstances, it is extremely difficult to follow any settled
financial policy; for the Government cannot even approximately
tell what income will be required to meet the necessary
expenditure of the State.... For the present the
Governor-General in Council thinks it wise to abstain from
imposing any fresh burdens on the country, and to accept the
temporary loss of the surplus by which it was hoped that an
insurance against famine had been provided."

That is, that the Government of India having "pledged itself not to spend one rupee of these special resources," except "for the construction of a particular class of public works"--having declared that "the sole justification for the increased taxation" is that it should be devoted to a particular end--no sooner gets the money into its possession than it expends the entire sum on something else, and then "thinks it wise" not to discuss the matter any further. The Government is very sorry; it really wanted to make an Insurance Fund against famine; but it finds that it "cannot even approximately tell what income will be required to meet the necessary expenditure of the State." Under such circumstances the Government finds it extremely difficult to follow "any settled financial policy," except that of spending every shilling which it can get possession of. Thus it is that an Imperial Government "redeems to the uttermost" the honour of the British nation, and strengthens the confidence of India in "the good faith of her rulers."

The Cotton Duties.

I come, lastly, to the action of the Indian Government in respect to the Cotton Duties. It is, I fancy, generally supposed in England that the duty on imported cotton was designedly protective--_i.e._, that it had from the beginning been imposed with the intention of favouring the Indian manufacturer at the expense of Manchester. This is a mistake. The duty was imposed at a time when there were no Indian manufactures to compete with those from England, simply as a source of revenue. In India there is a great difficulty in so arranging the incidence of taxation that the well-to-do classes shall contribute their proper share to the necessities of the State. A light duty on imported cotton--as being the universally used material for dress--enabled the Government to reach these classes in a manner that was effective without being burdensome. Even now that mills are at work in India, by far the larger part of these duties had nothing protective in their character, because there is in India no manufacture of the finer sorts of cotton. Whether, however, the duty was or was not protective in its character, both the Indian Government and the House of Commons had repeatedly given pledges that the duty should not be repealed until the Indian finances were in a position to justify the loss of revenue thereby occasioned. Lord Lytton, who throughout his viceroyalty has made a point in all important matters of making a confession of political faith exactly the opposite of his subsequent political action, expressed himself on the subject of the Cotton Duties with his usual copiousness. In reply to an address from the Calcutta Trades' Association, shortly after his arrival in India, he said:--

"I think that no one responsible for the financial
administration of this Empire would at present venture to
make the smallest reduction in any of its limited sources of
income. Let me, however, take this opportunity of assuring you
that, so far as I am aware, the abolition or reduction of
the Cotton Duties, at the cost of adding one sixpence to the
taxation of this country, has never been advocated, or even
contemplated by her Majesty's Secretary of State for India....
It is due to myself, and the confidence you express in my
character, that I should also assure you, on my own behalf,
that nothing will ever induce me to tax the people of India
for any exclusive benefit to their English fellow-subjects."

A short time previously he had told the Bombay Chamber of Commerce that "he was of opinion that, with the exception of about forty thousand pounds sterling, the duties were not protective, because Manchester had no Indian competitors in finer manufactures. He thought the £800,000 collected yearly as duty, on finer fabrics, a fair item of revenue. With regard to the duty on coarse goods, he thought it protective, because Bombay mills competed with Manchester; but he did not see how it could be abolished, because it would lead to irregularities in order to evade duty."

These assurances were given in 1876. In 1879, when the finances of India were in a state of almost hopeless embarrassment--when the Famine Insurance Fund had been misappropriated in the way I have related--when the Indian Government frankly acknowledged that it was beyond their power to estimate their future expenditure, even approximately, the Indian Government deliberately sacrificed revenue to the amount of £200,000 derived from this source. The motives which persuaded them to this sacrifice may have been as pure as driven snow; but with Lord Lytton's assurances fresh in their memories, I need not say that their motives were not so interpreted by those in India. There the explanation given was this:--The war in Afghanistan, from which so much had been expected, had resulted, not in success, but ignominious failure. The Government had been compelled to patch up a peace without a single element of permanence in it. Despite of the choral odes which Ministers sang together on the occasion of this peace, it was impossible that they could have been wholly blind to the real character of the Treaty of Gundamuck. They felt that discovery could not be long delayed, and, like the steward who had wasted his master's goods, they hastened to make themselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness. While, therefore, the war was still nominally unfinished, they sought to propitiate Manchester by throwing its merchants this sop of £200,000. Like Canning's famous policy of calling on the New World to redress the balance of the Old, the prestige of Imperialism, damaged by the failure in Afghanistan, was to be re-established in Manchester at the expense of the Indian taxpayer.

If the Indian Government had any better reason than this for their partial repeal of the Cotton Duties, it is a pity that they did not communicate it to the world. The reason which they did condescend to give was simply this--that the finances of the Empire were so heavily embarrassed, and in such confusion, that it was a matter of no consequence if they become still further involved to the extent of £200,000. I give the actual words, that I may not be suspected of caricaturing the Government:--

"The difficulties caused by the increased loss by exchange
are great, but they will not practically be aggravated to an
appreciable extent by the loss of £200,000. If the fresh fall
in the exchange should prove to be temporary, such a loss will
possess slight importance. If, on the other hand, the loss
by exchange does not diminish ... it will become necessary to
take measures of a most serious nature for the improvement of
the financial position; but the retention of the import duties
on cotton goods will not thereby be rendered possible. On
the contrary, such retention will become more difficult than
ever."

According to the Government of India, it was the peculiarity of these £200,000 to be simply an incumbrance, happen what might. If the exchange did _not_ fall, they were reduced to insignificance; if it did fall, their retention became more difficult than ever. The reader will not be surprised to learn that these enigmatic propositions were not accepted in India as a sufficient justification of the act they were supposed to explain.

Despotic as an Indian Viceroy is, there are even in India certain Constitutional checks on his authority, as, for instance, the Members of Council, the Vernacular and the English press. How was it, the reader may ask, that these constitutional checks were evaded; for it cannot be that they all concurred in such a policy as I have described in the foregoing pages? The principal means of evasion was secrecy. The negotiations with Shere Ali were kept sedulously hidden from the public knowledge, and their nature was only to be dimly inferred from the devout and philanthropic orations of the Viceroy himself. The same course was adopted with respect to the North-West famine; and but for the accident of Mr. Knight's visit to Agra, the truth would have remained hidden to this day. But Lord Lytton did not trust to secrecy alone. The vernacular press was gagged by a Press Act, which was hurried through Council, and made a law in the course of a few hours. The English press could not be gagged precisely in this fashion, but it was very ingeniously drugged through the agency of a curious functionary, styled the Press Commissioner. When Mr. Stanhope was questioned in the House regarding the special duties of this nondescript official, he replied that he had been appointed to superintend the working of the Vernacular Press Act. Actually, he was in operation for several months before that Act had come into existence, and never has had any duties in connection with it. The Press Commissioner is attached to the personal staff of the Viceroy, and may be regarded as a kind of official bard, whose duty it is to chant the praises of his master, and advertise his political wares. The description of Lord Lytton as a "specially-gifted Viceroy" is believed in India to have proceeded from the affectionate imagination of the Press Commissioner. But, besides this, he is a channel of communication between the Government of India and the Indian press. When he was first called into existence, India was informed that a new era was about to begin, in the relations between the press and the Government. The Government, anxious that its policy should be fully discussed by an intelligent press, had appointed a Press Commissioner, whose duty it would be to keep editors supplied with accurate information, from the very fountain-head, of all that Government was doing, or intended to do. It is unnecessary to say that the Press Commissioner has done nothing of the kind. The greater part of the matter he communicates to the press is simply worthless, and wholly devoid of interest to any sane person. If anything of importance occurs which the Government desires to keep secret, but which it fears will leak out, the Press Commissioner communicates the matter to the editors "confidentially," and then it is understood that they are in honour bound not to allude to the subject in their papers. At distant intervals, however, the Press Commissioner, of necessity, allows some interesting scraps of information to escape from him; and it is by means of these that the English press is drugged. Any newspaper which offends the Government by criticism of too harsh a character is liable to have the supply of such morsels suspended until it gives evidence of amendment. And as there is in India, among the readers of newspapers, quite an insatiable craving for these morsels of official gossip, it would be extremely prejudicial to the circulation of a newspaper if they no longer appeared in its columns. The vengeance of Lord Lytton and the Press Commissioner has already fallen upon one journal. The Calcutta _Statesman_, having poured ridicule on this Press Commissioner, has been deprived of his ministrations. In brief, the Press Commissionership is simply an agency for bribing the English Press, which costs the Indian taxpayer the sum annually of £5000. But the most effective check on the arbitrary authority of the Governor-General is furnished by his Council. These are selected as men of long Indian experience, in order to aid the Governor-General with their advice and special knowledge. The last Governor-General who set at nought the advice and remonstrances of his Council was Lord Auckland, when he plunged into the disastrous war in Afghanistan. Lord Lytton, who in other respects has so carefully trod in the footsteps of his predecessor, did not fail to imitate him in this. His frontier policy was carried out in spite of the opposition of the three most experienced members of his Council; his repeal of the Cotton Duties in the face of their unanimous opposition, with the single exception of Sir John Strachey. Thus it is that, under Lord Lytton, British rule in India has become a tawdry and fantastic system of personal rule. It might perhaps do well enough if an Empire could be governed by means of ceremonies, speeches, and elegantly written despatches--"fables in prose," they might very fitly be called. But an Empire cannot be so governed, and the result of the experiment has been an amount of human suffering appalling to contemplate. The Indian air is "full of farewells for the dying and mournings for the dead," and the path of the Government can be traced in broken pledges and dead men's bones. These bones are as dragon's teeth, which Lord Lytton is sowing broadcast all over India and Afghanistan, and they will assuredly be changed into armed men if the hand of the sower be not promptly stayed.

"Nothing," writes Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, one of the Indian
Members of Council, "would have induced me to have been a
party to the imposition of restrictions on the press, if I
could have foreseen that within a year of the passing of the
Vernacular Press Act the Government of India would be embarked
on a course which, in my opinion, is as unwise and ill-timed
as it is destructive of the reputation for justice upon which
the prestige and political supremacy of the British Government
in India so greatly depend. And here I must remark that
the slight value which in some influential quarters is
now attached to the popularity of our rule with our native
subjects, has for some time past struck me as a source of
grave political danger. _The British Empire in India was not
established by a policy of ignoring popular sentiment, and
of stigmatizing all views and opinions which are opposed
to certain favourite theories, as the views and opinions of
foolish people. Nor will our rule be long maintained if such a
policy is persisted in._"

ROBERT D. OSBORN.

ON THE UTILITY TO FLOWERS OF THEIR BEAUTY.

The question which I propose to consider in this paper is how far the beauty of blossoms can be accounted for by the utility of this beauty to the plant producing them. It is manifestly only one particular case of a larger inquiry whether the beauty which Nature exhibits can be accounted for by its utility.

These questions connect themselves with some of the highest points of the philosophy of the universe. Is the system of the universe intellectual, or is it purely material? Is there an ordering mind, or is there merely blind and struggling matter? Are there final causes as well as material causes, or are there material causes only?

These questions have been asked and answered in opposite senses, from the first dawn of philosophy to the present hour; and during all that period of time the battle has been raging--and has spread, too, over the whole realm of Nature. Scarcely any branch of natural science exists which has not furnished materials for at least a skirmish; so that it requires an experienced and impartial eye to be able rightly to understand the true fortunes of the contest over the whole field of battle. True it is, that for every man the question between the two theories has to be decided by somewhat simpler considerations than any such survey. Something in every man seems inevitably to determine him towards either the intellectual or the material theory of things.

The existence of beauty in the world is a very remarkable fact. On the theory of a Divine and beneficent Creator, this fact has seemed no difficulty; but the theory of a mere blind fermentation of matter gives no account of it, except as a mere accident, which, on the doctrine of chances, should be perhaps a very rare and unusual accident. Hence the existence of beauty has from of old been a favourite theme of the theistic believers. "Let them know how much better the Lord of them is," says the author of the Wisdom of Solomon, speaking of the works of Nature, "for the first Author of beauty hath created them ... for by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably the Maker of them is seen."[1] The same familiar view has lately been presented by the Duke of Argyll in his "Reign of Law":[2]--

"It would be to doubt the evidence of our senses and of our
reason, or else to assume hypotheses of which there is no
proof whatever, if we were to doubt that mere ornament, mere
variety, are as much an end and aim in the workshop of Nature
as they are known to be in the workshop of the goldsmith and
the jeweller. Why should they not? The love and desire of
these is universal in the mind of man. It is seen not more
distinctly in the highest forms of civilized art than in the
habits of the rudest savage, who covers with elaborate carving
the handle of his war-club or the prow of his canoe. Is it
likely that this universal aim and purpose of the mind of man
should be wholly without relation to the aims and purposes of
his Creator? He that formed the eye to see beauty, shall He
not see it? He that gave the human hand its cunning to work
for beauty, shall His hand never work for it? How, then, shall
we account for all the beauty of the world--for the careful
provision made for it where it is only the secondary object,
not the first?"

But even if beauty be always associated with utility and have in fact been brought about by its utility, it may nevertheless have been an object in the mind of a Divine artificer, who may have been minded to use the one as a means and end to the other. We may therefore, I think, approach the subject with a perfect freedom from any theological bias.

The whole subject will, I believe, be felt by some persons to be a piece of moonshine,--the whole discussion fit for cloudland, not for this practical solid world of ours.

Beauty, such persons would say, is not a real thing, an objective fact: it is a part of man, not of the world--it is in him who sees, not in the thing seen: it is seen by one man in one thing--by another man in another.

To this it seems a sufficient answer to say that the relation of any one external thing to any one mind which produces the peculiar condition which we call the perception of beauty, is _a_ fact, and, like every other single fact, must have an adequate cause. But when we find that there are forms of beauty, such as the beauty of sunlight, which operate alike on all men, and, it would seem, on all sensitive beings--when we find that the brilliant flowers which attract the child in the field or the lady in the drawing-room, attract the insect tribes--we feel ourselves in the presence of a great body of persistent relations, which it is impossible to pass over as unreal or as unimportant.

But, again, there is ugliness in the world; and one ugly thing, it is suggested, destroys all your deductions from beauty. This, no doubt, is a very important fact for any one to grapple with who proposes to give any theoretical explanation of the presence of beauty in the universe; but for me, who am only inquiring whether and how far beauty is useful, it is not really material, because there can be no doubt that beauty, as well as ugliness, exists in the world. This much I will say in passing, that, to my mind, the balance of things is in favour of beauty and against ugliness--the tendency is in favour of beauty, not ugliness, and that tendency may be a very important thing to think of.

Furthermore, the fact that we recognize ugliness seems to make our recognition of beauty more important; for it shows that the perception of beauty is not mere habit, and that we have an inward and independent judgment on the matter--we are able to approve the one thing on the score of beauty, and to reject the other as ugly.

Even allowing fully for the existence of ugliness, it must be conceded that the world around us presents a vast mass of beauty--complex, diverse, commingled, and not easily admitting of analysis. It is common alike to the organic and the inorganic realms of Nature. The pageants of the sky at morning, noon, and night, the forms of the trees, the beauty of the flowers, the glory of the hills, the awful sublimity of the stars--these, and a thousand things in Nature, fill the soul with a sense of beauty, which the art neither of the poet, nor of the philosopher, nor of the painter can come near to depict. We are moved and overcome, sometimes by this object of beauty, sometimes by that, but yet more by the complex mass of glory of the universe.

"For Nature beats in perfect tune,
And rounds with rhyme her every rune;
Whether she work on land or sea,
Or hide underground her alchemy.
Thou canst not wave thy staff in air,
Or dip thy paddle in the lake,
But it carves the bow of beauty there,
And ripples in rhyme the oar forsake."

As yet no attempt has been made to show the utility of this promiscuous and multitudinous crowd of beauties--and it seems not likely that such an attempt can yet be made with success: and the phenomena of Nature are therefore likely for a long time to come to impress most men with the sense of beauty for beauty's sake. But in respect of certain particular and separable instances, the attempt has recently been made to show that the beauty exhibited is useful to the structure exhibiting it, and consequently that it may be accounted for by the strictly utilitarian principle of the survival of the fittest,--one instance in which this has been most notably attempted being in respect of the beauty of flowers. Let us consider how far beauty can thus be accounted for in this particular case.

There will be a great advantage in this course; for beauty is a thing about which it is not very easy to argue: it is too subtle, too evanescent, too disputable, to afford an easy material for the logical or scientific crucible; and these difficulties we shall best surmount by in the first place isolating certain beautiful things for our consideration, and limiting to them our inquiry into how far each of the rival theories is sufficient to explain their existence. We shall thus try to narrow the great controversy to very definite and distinct issues.

"Flowers," says Mr. Darwin,[3] "rank amongst the most
beautiful productions of Nature, and they have become,
through natural selection, beautiful, or rather conspicuous in
contrast with the greenness of the leaves, that they might
be easily observed and visited by insects, so that their
fertilization might be favoured. I have come to this
conclusion, from finding it an invariable rule that when a
flower is fertilized by the wind it never has a gaily-coloured
corolla. Again, several plants habitually produce two kinds of
flowers: one kind open and coloured, so as to attract insects;
the other closed and not coloured, destitute of nectar, and
never visited by insects. We may safely conclude that, if
insects had never existed on the face of the earth, the
vegetation would not have been decked with beautiful flowers,
but would have produced only such poor flowers as are now
borne by our firs, oaks, nut and ash trees, by the grasses, by
spinach, docks, and nettles."

No one can doubt who watches a meadow on a summer's day that insects are attracted by the scent and the colours of the flowers. The whole field is busy with their jubilant hum. These little creatures have the same sense of beauty that we have. What room there is for thought in that fact! There is a subtle bond of mental union between ourselves and the creatures whom we so often despise. There is a joy widespread and multiplied beyond our highest calculation. What a deadly blow to that egotism of man which thinks of all beauty as made for him alone!

But I return to the argument. We have presented to our notice three kinds of attraction which operate upon insects--the conspicuousness of colour and form, the beauty of the smell, and the pleasant taste of the honey. No one, as I have said, who watches a meadow or a garden on a summer's day can for a moment doubt the operation of these causes, or question the direct action of insects in producing the fertilization of flowers. In that sense the beauty of a flower is clearly of direct use to the flower which exhibits it. It is better for it that it should be fertilized by insects than not fertilized at all; but is it better for it to be fertilized by insects than by the wind, or by some other agency, if such exist?

This shall be the subject of inquiry. But before we can answer it, we must go a little afield and collect some other of the facts of the case.

The conclusion that beauty is useful for the fertilization of the flower does not rest merely on the general phenomena of a summer meadow. It is confirmed by many other observations. Flowers are not merely attractive in themselves; they are frequently rendered attractive by their grouping. Sometimes flowers individually small are gathered into heads, or spikes, or bunches, or umbels, and so produce a more conspicuous effect than would result from a more equal distribution of the flowers; sometimes yet more minute flowers or florets are gathered together into what appears a single flower, and often have the outer florets so modified both in shape and colour as to produce the general effect of one very brilliant blossom, as in the daisy or the marigold.

Sometimes the same result is produced by "the massing of small flowers into dense cushions of bright colour."[4] This, as is well known, is of common occurrence with Alpine flowers; and this mode of growth, as well as the great size of many Alpine blossoms as compared with that of the whole plant, and the great brilliance of Alpine plants as compared with their congeners of the lowlands, have all been explained by reference to the comparative rarity of insects in the Alpine heights, and the consequent necessity, if the plants are to survive, that they should offer strong attractions to their needful friends.[5] A similar explanation has been offered for the brilliant colours of Arctic flowers.[6]

Furthermore, this curious fact exists, that of flowering plants a large number do not ripen or put forward their pistils and stamens at the same periods of their growth: in some cases the pistil is ready to receive the pollen whilst the anthers are immature and not ready to supply it: such are called proterogynous. In other cases the anthers are ripe before the pistil is ready to receive the pollen: these are proterandrous. In either case the same event happens--that the ovules can never be fertilized by the pollen of the same blossom, nor without some foreign agency, generally that of insects.

Lastly, there is a large number of plants, including a great proportion of those with unsymmetrical blossoms, of which the flowers have been shown to be specially adapted by various mechanical contrivances for insect agency. Nothing, as is well known, is more marvellous than the variety and subtlety of the arrangements for the purpose which exist in orchidaceous plants, as explained by the patience and genius of Mr. Darwin.

In view of these facts it would be impossible to deny that conspicuousness is one of the agencies in force for the fertilization of flowers; that, to use the recent language of Mr. Darwin, "flowers are not only delightful for their beauty and fragrance, but display most wonderful adaptations for various purposes."[7]

So far we have considered the evidence which is affirmative, and in favour of the explanation of the existence of beauty in flowers; we have found clearly that beauty, or rather conspicuousness, is in many cases useful to the plant. But beauty is by no means the only agency in this necessary process. On the contrary, the agencies actually in operation are very numerous.

As Mr. Darwin points out in the passage I have cited, and still more at large in his work "On the Different Forms of Flowers," a large proportion of existing plants are fertilized by the action of the wind; and again, many plants bear two kinds of flowers, the one conspicuous and attractive to insects, the other inconspicuous and which never open to admit the activity either of insects or of the wind. Moreover, there are various other agencies called into play. Some plants, such as the _Hypericum perforatum_, one of the commonest of the St. John's Worts, and probably the bindweed, are, it seems, fertilized by the withering of the corolla, which naturally brings the stamens into contact with the style, and so transfers the pollen grains from the one to the other.[8] Other plants, again, such as the common centaury (_Erythræa centaurium_) and the _Chlora perfoliata_, are fertilized by the closing of the corolla over the anthers and stigma, not in the death but in the sleep of the plant.[9] In the brilliant autumnal _Colchicum_, and in the _Sternbergia_, again, according to Dr. Kerner, Nature has recourse to a more complex machinery: the corolla first closes over the anthers, which are at a lower level than the stigma, and takes off some of the pollen; a growth of the corolla carries the pollen dust to the level of the stigma, and a second closing of the corolla transfers the pollen to the stigmatic surface. The pollen has been made to ascend to its proper place by an arrangement which reminds one of the man-engine of a Cornish mine.[10] A similar arrangement is described as occurring in the bright-flowered _Pedicularis_.[11]

Let us take another group of beautiful flowers which adorn our greenhouses and our tables: I mean the _Asclepiadæ_, to which the _Stephanotis_ and the _Hoya_ belong. The former is distinguished by the beauty of its scent as well as of its flowers. Both present flowers not merely conspicuous in themselves from their size, form, and colour, but conspicuous also by reason of their grouping. Here, if anywhere, we should expect that beauty should justify itself by its utility. But the facts appear to be just the other way. The pollen is collected together into waxy masses, which are arranged in a very peculiar manner on the pistil; and the pollen tubes pass from the pollen grains whilst still enclosed within the anthers, and so bring about fertilization without the intervention of insect agency. It is difficult to suppose the _Asclepiadæ_ can have become beautiful for the sake of an agency of which they never avail themselves.

Our common Fumitory has not very conspicuous flowers, but still they have considerable attractiveness of form and still more of colour, due both to the individual blossom and to their grouping together; and yet _Fumaria_ is said to be self-fertile.[12]

A much more brilliantly coloured member of the same family is the _Dicentra (Diclytra) spectabilis_, so familiar in our gardens. Any one who examines the flowers of this species will continually find the pollen grains transferred to the stigma without the slightest trace of the flower ever having opened so as to allow of insect agency. Dr. Lindley[13] has given an account of the mechanism for self-fertilization; and this flower has recently been the subject of an elaborate study by the German botanist, Hildebrand,[14] and he concurs in the view that the anthers inevitably communicate their pollen to the pistil, and that as the result of a very complicated and subtle arrangement of the parts, which it would be useless to attempt to describe without diagrams. But he believes that in addition to the arrangements for self-fertilization, another arrangement exists for producing cross-fertilization by insects; but as the plant has never produced seed under his observation, he is unable to tell whether one mode of fertilization is more useful than the other. I think the evidence of the self-fertilization is far clearer than that of the cross-fertilization.

Now, if the _Dicentra_ has become beautiful in order to attract insects, it must have done so through a long series of developments, for its adaptation to their agency is of the most complex kind. It is difficult to suppose either that, side by side with this development for cross-fertilization, there has been also developed another complex arrangement for self-fertilization, or that an earlier complex arrangement for self-fertilization should have survived through the changes necessary to render the flower fit for insect fertilization. The co-existence in one organism of two complex schemes for different objects, and the interlacing of those two schemes in one beautiful flower (which, if Hildebrand be right, occurs in the _Dicentra_), seem to be things very improbable if the beautiful flower has become what it is in the pursuit of one only of those objects. These speculations may be premature as regards the particular flower; but the co-existence of two modes of fertilization is not peculiar to _Dicentra_ and seems to furnish material for important reflection.

Yet one more plant must be considered. The _Loasa aurantiaca_ is a creeper which grows freely in our gardens, and has large and brilliantly coloured scarlet flowers turned up with yellow. Its seeds set freely in cultivation. The means by which fertilization is effected are--unless my observations have misled me--very peculiar. When the flower first unfolds, the numerous stamens are found collected together in bundles in depressions or folds of the petals; after a while the anthers begin to move, and one after the other the stamens pass upwards from their nests in the petals, and gather in a thick group round the style; subsequently a downward and backward movement begins, which brings the anthers against the pistils, and restores the stamens nearly to their old position, but with exhausted and faded anthers. I have never seen any insects at work on the flowers, and yet I find the plant to be a free seeder.

So long ago as 1840 M. Fromond enumerated several conspicuous flowers in which, according to his observations, fertilization was effected without the agency of either the wind or insects.[15] And much more recently an American writer, Mr. Meehan, has given a list of eleven genera, amongst others, in which he has observed the pistils covered with the pollen of the plant before the flower has opened, and in the one case which he submitted to the microscope, it was found that the pollen tubes were descending through the pistil towards the ovarium.[16] Amongst the genera he names were _Westaria_, _Lathyras_, _Ballota_, _Circes Genista_, _Pisum_, and _Linaria_.

The instances which I have given are mostly from plants familiar in our fields, our gardens, or our greenhouses. They are, I think, sufficient to make us pause before we conclude that all conspicuous flowers are fertilized by insect agency. It may be that Bacon's warning to attend as carefully to negative as to affirmative instances has been a little forgotten. Moreover, these instances seem to show that it would be a great error to suppose that all flowers are fertilized either by insects or by the wind; and it is probable that the more the subject is considered the more complex will the arrangements for fertilization be found to be.

The agencies to which I have last referred exist, it will be observed, in beautiful and conspicuous flowers; and yet act independently of that beauty and that conspicuousness: so that in each instance these facts are, on the utilitarian theory, unexplained and residual phenomena. They, therefore, demand earnest inquiry. For the existence of a single residual phenomenon is notice to the inquirer that he has not got to the bottom of his subject; that his theory is either not the truth or not the whole truth.

Do the facts justify us in concluding that insect fertilization is more beneficial to the plant than fertilization by the wind or any other agency? Do they afford any sufficient cause for that change from the one mode of fertilization to the other which has been suggested? The facts bearing on these questions are very remarkable; for, as we have already seen, many plants produce two kinds of blossom, the one conspicuous and the other inconspicuous; the one visited by insects, the other self-fertilizing. Recent observation shows that these cleistogamous flowers, as they are called, are present in a great variety of plants.[17] In the violet they are found to exist, being seen in the summer and autumn, when all the more brilliant flowers have gone. The one flower has everything in its favour--honey and a beauty of colour and of smell that has passed into a proverb--and it opens its blue wings to the visits of the insect tribe in the season of their utmost jollity and life. The other has everything against it: it is inconspicuous, scentless, ugly, and closed. And yet, which succeeds the better? which produces the more seed? The cleistogamous, and not the brilliant flowers: the victory is with ugliness, and not with beauty.

The same is true of the _Impatiens fulva_. This is an American plant, closely akin to the balsam of our gardens, which has now thoroughly established itself on the banks of some of our rivers, as the Wey, and the tributary stream that runs through Abinger and Shere. It has attractive flowers hung on the daintiest flower-stalks. It has also little green flowers that never open and almost escape attention; and yet they, and not the large flowers, are the great source of seed vessels to the plant--the great security that the life of the race will be continued.[18] Again, ugliness has borne away the palm of utility from beauty.

So, too, in America the same happens with the _Specularia perfoliata_: in shady situations all its flowers are said to be cleistogamous, and to be wonderfully productive and strong.[19]

The conditions of the problem in these cases are such as to make them of the last importance in our inquiry into the utility of beauty; for in each case we are comparing a conspicuous and an inconspicuous flower in the very same plant. The conditions seem to exclude the possibility of error in the result.

Two explanations have been suggested of the origin of these cleistogamous flowers: according to the one, they are the earliest form of the flowers; according to the other view, they are degraded forms of the more beautiful flowers.[20] For our purpose, it is immaterial whether of the two explanations is correct; for either the development of beauty has diminished the utility of the flower, or the loss of beauty has increased the utility: in either event, utility and beauty are dissociated the one from the other.

Another experiment Nature presents us with, in which the conditions are nearly, if not quite, as rigorously exclusive of error. The vast majority of orchidaceous plants are, as already mentioned, dependent on insect agency, for fertilization, and present a marvellous variety of contrivances for effecting cross-fertilization through their activity. But one of our orchids (the Bee orchis) is self-fertilized. I hardly know anything in vegetable life more striking or beautiful than to see its delicate pollinaria at a certain stage of its inflorescence descending on to the stigmatic surface and so yielding their pollen grains to the fertilization of their own blossom; and yet the Bee orchis has been found by observers to be as free a seeder as any of its tribe. Here the beauty and conspicuousness of the blossom, which are very great, are, as far as can be seen, useless; the plant gains nothing by the attractiveness which it offers, and the colouring and ornamentation of the blossom are, on the theory of utility, residual phenomena.

It is difficult to imagine that the change from wind or self-fertilization can, so to speak, commend itself to the flower on the score either of economy or success. If the anemophilous blossom must produce somewhat more pollen than the entomophilous, it saves the great expenditure of material and vital force requisite for the production of the large and conspicuous corolla. The one is fertilized by every wind that blows; the other, especially in the case of highly-specialized flowers like the orchids, may be incapable of fertilization except by a very few insects. The celebrated Madagascar orchid _Angræcum_ can be fertilized, it is said, only by a moth with a proboscis from ten to fourteen inches long--a moth so rare or local that it is as yet known to naturalists only by prophecy. It is difficult to suppose that it would be beneficial for the plant's chance of survival to exchange as the fertilizing agent the universal wind for this most localized insect.

And here another line of evidence comes in and demands consideration. The face of Nature, as we now see it, has not been always exhibited by the world. The flora, like the fauna, of the world has changed: how has it changed as regards the beauty of the flowers? Does it give any testimony to that _becoming_ beautiful of the flowers of plants to which Mr. Darwin refers? The answer is not a very certain one, by reason of the imperfection of the geological record, of the probability that beautiful plants, if they had existed, and had been of a delicate structure, would have perished and left no trace behind. But so far as an answer can be given, it is in favour of the increase of floral beauty in the vegetable world. The earliest flower known (the _Pothocites Grantonii_) occurs in the coal measures; its flowers cannot have been other than inconspicuous in themselves, though it is possible that by grouping they were made more attractive to the eye; in the period of the growth of the coal, when this plant lived, the vast forests seem principally to have been composed of trees without conspicuous blossoms, huge club mosses and marestails, and many conifers; in the earlier periods of this earth we have no trace of conspicuous blossom, and it is not till the upper chalk that the oaks and myrtles and _Proteaceæ_ appear as denizens of the forests. In like manner, if we refer to the appearance of insects on the earth, we have no clear trace in very early strata of those classes of insects which now do the principal work of fertilization for our conspicuous flowers. In the coal measures there have been found insects of the scorpion, beetle, cockroach, grasshopper, ant, and neuropterous families; but of a butterfly or moth there is only evidence of great doubt. It seems probable, then, and one cannot say more, that with the progress of the ages, flowers, as a whole, have become more conspicuous and attractive. But if we inquire whether the dull flowers of one era have grown into the conspicuous flowers of another, the answer is negative. The conifers of the coal age were anemophilous then, and are anemophilous still; they show no symptom of becoming more conspicuous; the same is true of the oaks of the chalk period, and of all other inconspicuous plants. The difference between conspicuous and inconspicuous flowers appears a permanent one; and the page of geology gives no evidence in favour of the supposed change.

Another observation must yet be made. Comparing flowers fertilized by insects and by the wind, it has never, so far as I can learn, been observed that the former are more certain of being set or more prolific than the latter; and, as already shown, the inconspicuous flowers are often more fertile than the conspicuous ones. What motive would there be, then, for the inconspicuous flowers of the early geologic periods to convert themselves into the brilliant corollas of our day?

Carefully considered, the passage which I have cited from Mr. Darwin does not account for the beauty of the flowers of plants at all; it accounts only for their conspicuousness, as the writer himself points out; and the two things are so different, that to account for the one is not even to tend to account for the other. If any one will consider the beauty of every inflorescence, whether conspicuous or not--a beauty which the microscope always makes apparent where the unaided eye fails to perceive it; or, again, the easily perceived beauty of many inconspicuous plants; or, lastly, the beauty of many conspicuous plants which does not tend to their conspicuousness--he will see how true this is.

For in many conspicuous flowers there are delicate pencillings and markings which certainly do not tend to make them such, but which nevertheless add greatly to their beauty, as we perceive it. In the regularly shaped flowers these markings often start from the centre of the blossom like radii, and they may be conceived as guiding the insects to the central store of honey. Such guidance can hardly be needful, as the shape of the flower itself generally does all, and more than all, that the markings can do in the way of guidance. But it is by no means true that all the markings lead to the centre of the flower: many are transverse; many are marginal; some are by way of spot.

Again, take the irregularly shaped flowers, which are supposed to be the exclusive subjects of insect fertilization; how infinite are the beauties of the flower over and above those which make it conspicuous, or can assist to guide the insect. Take the orchids, for example: the labellum is generally the landing-place of the insect visitors; but the other flower-leaves are almost always the subjects of a vast display of delicate beauty which cannot be accounted for by the necessity of conspicuousness or guidance. All this beauty is, on the theory in question, an unexplained fact.

But, again, take the grasses, which depend for fertilization exclusively on the wind, and have no need to woo the visits of the insects. The beauty of the markings of the inflorescence of many of the grasses is very great, though far from conspicuous: take the delicately banded flowers of our quaking grasses; take the rich crimson of the foxtails; take the brilliant yellow of the Canary _Phaleris_; and it is impossible to refuse the attribute of beauty in colour to the wind-loving grasses. And all this beauty is unexplained on the theory in question.

It is impossible to speak of the grasses and not to have the mind recalled to the beauty that resides in form as contrasted with colour. Elegance, grace of form, characterizes most (but not all) plants, whether fertilized by the wind or by insects; and yet this grace, in many cases, perhaps in most, adds nothing to their conspicuousness. It is, on the theory in question, a piece of idle beauty; and yet it is all-pervading--a persistent, though not universal, characteristic of the vegetable world.

But to revert to conspicuousness. It is not true to say that all self-fertilized plants have inconspicuous flowers. I have adduced the _Stephanotis_ and _Hoya_ on this point. Nor is it true to say that all anemophilous flowers are inconspicuous as compared with the green of their leaves. The large but delicate yellow groups of the male flowers of the Scotch pine (not to travel beyond very familiar plants) are very conspicuous in the early summer--much more so, to my eye at least, than many flowers which are supposed to stake their lives on attraction by being conspicuous. Hermann Müller has observed on this same fact, and considers it to be clear that the display of colour can be of no use to the plant, and must therefore be regarded as "a merely accidental phenomenon,"[21]--_i.e._, a phenomenon not accounted for by utility.

The crimson flowers of the larch, again, are certainly very conspicuous as well as beautiful on the yet leafless boughs; and yet they owe nothing to insects.

One other remark must be made on this passage from Mr. Darwin which has formed my text. It does not pretend to account for the production of beauty or even of conspicuousness. It only seeks to account for the accumulation of that quality in certain plants, and its comparative absence in others. The tendency in Nature to produce beauty is a postulate in Mr. Darwin's theory.

The beauty of mountain blossoms has been referred to as supporting the utility of beauty: it is not perfectly clear that even this can be accounted for merely by the need of attracting insects. It is said by the American writer to whom I have already referred, Mr. Meehan, that the flowers of the Rocky Mountains are beautifully coloured, produce as much seed as similar ones elsewhere, and yet that there is a remarkable scarcity of insect life--so great, I understand him to mean, as to render it highly improbable that the races of the flowers can be perpetuated by insect agency.