X.

BEAUTY.

Very much of the delight with which we pursue natural history is surely due to the almost constant recognition of the beautiful. I do not know that I could say with the poet,--

"A thing of beauty is a joy _for ever_;"

but certainly it is a joy as long as it endures; and the naturalist finds an endless recurrence of things of beauty. Birds, insects, shells, zoophytes, flowers, sea-weeds, are all redundant of beauty; and all the classes of natural objects, though not in an equal degree, nor manifestly in every individual object, yet possess it as a prominent element. Indeed, from the profusion with which loveliness is sown broadcast over the works of God, I have often thought, though it is not directly revealed, that a sense of the beautiful and a complacency in it, altogether independent of fitness for certain ends, or the uses which may be subserved, is an attribute of the Holy One Himself, and that our perception of it is the reflection of His--a part of that image of God in which man was created, and which sin has not wholly obliterated. I know that God may have clothed His works with beauty for other admiring eyes than man's; and that it is probable that the holy angels may be far more conversant with creation than we are with all our researches,--that the ten thousand times ten thousand flowers which are "born to blush unseen" by _man_, may be seen and admired by "ten thousand times ten thousand" angels,[203] and thus the tribute of praise for their perfection may be ever ascending before Him whose hands made them for His glory. We may allow this; and yet with reverence presume that His own pure eyes look upon the lilies' array with a delight in their mere loveliness, infinitely greater than that which men, or even angels, take in it, seeing it is written,--"for thy pleasure they are, and were created."

I remember being struck, and somewhat awed, too, with a thought of this kind, once, when, pushing my way through a very dense and tangled thicket in a lone and lofty mountain region of Jamaica, sufficiently remote from the dwellings of man to render it probable that no civilized human foot had penetrated thither before. I suddenly came upon a most magnificent terrestrial orchid in full blossom. It was _Phajus Tankervilliæ_,--a noble plant, which from the midst of broad leaves growing out of a mass of green bulbs, had thrown up its stout blossom-stems to the height of a yard or more, crowned with the pyramidal spike of lily-like flowers, whose expanding petals of pure white on one side and golden brown on the other, and trumpet-lip of gorgeous purple seemed, to my ravished gaze, the very perfection of beauty. For ages, I thought, that beauteous flower had been growing in that wild and unvisited spot, every season "filling the air around with beauty," and had in all probability never met a single human gaze before. Had, then, all that divinely-formed loveliness been mere waste for those generations? I asked myself; and I immediately replied, No: the eye of God himself hath rested on it with satisfaction, and the Lord hath taken pleasure in this work of His hands.

I shall not make this chapter an essay on the sublime and beautiful, nor seek to analyse the sense of beauty. It is enough that it is an appetite of our being, and that most abundantly in nature, on every side, there is the material of its gratification. So abundantly, indeed, that it were easy to expand the few pages which I propose to devote to the subject into a volume, or a dozen volumes, and yet leave untouched vast treasures of the beautiful in natural history. I must content myself and my readers with the selection of a few of the more prominent objects in which this sense is gratified, and with a discrimination of two or three distinct phases or conditions of existence which contribute, each in its measure, to give delight to the eyes.

[Illustration: ANTELOPES.]

Among Quadrupeds, there is perhaps less of beauty, strictly considered, than in most other classes of animals. Elegance of form, however, which is one phase of it, is seen in the lithe and active squirrel, the pretty petaurist, and many other of the smaller beasties, and is found in perfection in the deer and antelopes. Who that has seen a pet fawn coming to be caressed by a fair girl, but must have had his sense of the beautiful gratified? Mark the freedom and grace of every motion! See how it stretches out its pretty meek face and taper neck towards the hand; its extreme timidity causing its whole body and every limb to start on the slightest stir from the beholders, while on the least approach it bounds away in the exuberant playfulness of its little heart, then stops, and turns, and gazes, and stretches out its neck again! See when it trots or walks, how high it lifts its little slender feet, bending its agile limbs as if motion itself were a pleasure! See, as it stands, with one fore-foot bent up, the hoof nearly touching the belly; the long graceful ears moving this way and that, now thrown forwards, now backwards, now erected, to catch the slightest sound,--what a picture of fairy grace it is! There is beauty, too, in the soft, full liquid eye of these animals,--the "bright, black eye" of the "dear gazelle," which in the East is the very ideal of female loveliness. Its melting gaze seems full of tenderness, so that we cannot look without loving it.

Nor is beauty of colour wholly wanting. How rich is the tawny fur of the tiger, dashed with its black streaks! And the brighter yellow of the leopard and the jaguar, studded all over with rosettes of black spots! We forget the ferocity of the savage in its beautifully-painted coat. The zebra, too,--with the fine contrast of those bands of richest sable on the cream-coloured ground, now bold and broad, as on the rounded body, now running in fine parallel but irregularly-waved lines, as on the face,--is a beautiful quadruped; and a herd of them galloping wantonly over a South African plain, must be a sight worth seeing indeed.

When we come to Birds, however, beauty is not the exception, but the rule. The form of a bird is almost always graceful; the rounded swellings and undulations of outline, and the smoothness of the plumage give pleasure to the eye, even when there is no attractiveness of hue. One has almost a difficulty in naming an inelegant bird. But when, as in a thousand instances, brilliancy of colouring is combined with elegance of shape and smoothness of plumage, we must be charmed. Is not our own little goldfinch, is not the pert chaffinch that comes up to our very feet for a grain or a crumb, a pretty object? But the tropical birds,--we must look at them if we wish to know what nature can do in the way of adornment. We should go to the flats on the embouchure of the Amazon, and see the rosy spoonbills, in their delicate carnation dress, set off by the lustrous crimson of their shoulders and breast-tufts, feeding by hundreds on the green mud, or watch the gorgeous ibises, all clad in glowing scarlet with black-tipped wings, when, in serried ranks, a mile in length, like the vermillion cloud of morning, they come to their breeding-place,--a truly magnificent sight.[204]

The first of the Parrot tribe that I ever had an opportunity of seeing in its native freedom was the beautiful Parrakeet of the Southern States. Eighty or a hundred birds in one compact flock passed me flying low, and all nearly on the same plane; and, as they swept by, screaming as they went, I fancied that they looked like an immense shawl of green satin, on which an irregular pattern was worked in scarlet and gold and azure. The sun's rays were brilliantly reflected from the gorgeous surface, which rapidly sped past like a splendid vision.

The Cock of the Rock is a fine South American bird of the richest orange colour, crowned with a double crest of feathers edged with purple. Mr Wallace describes his search for it on the Rio Negro, and his admiration of its beauty. Some time he sought in vain, for it is a rare bird, till the old Indian who was his guide suddenly caught him by the arm, and, pointing to a dense thicket, whispered in a low tone, "Gallo!" Peering through the foliage, the naturalist caught a glimpse of the magnificent bird, sitting amidst the gloom, and shining out like a mass of brilliant flame. As it is easily alarmed and very wary, it required some following and perseverance before he shot it. One of his Indians descended into the deep rocky glen into which it fell, and brought it to him. "I was lost," he says, "in admiration of the dazzling beauty of its soft downy feathers; not a spot of blood was visible, not a feather was ruffled, and the soft, warm, flexible body set off the fresh swelling plumage in a manner which no stuffed specimen can approach."[205]

There is something exquisitely pleasing to the eye in the delicate painting of the soft plumage in most of the Goatsuckers and their allies. Entirely destitute of brilliant hues as they are, the combinations of warm browns, and cool greys, interchanged with black and white, and the manner in which these are softened, and blended, and minutely pencilled, produce an effect that is peculiarly charming.

In the Trogons of the tropical regions we see elegance of form combined with the most gorgeous colouring. Green and gold, crimson, scarlet, orange, and black, are the hues of these birds, which hide themselves in the deep dark recesses of the Amazonian and Indian forests. That species called the Resplendent is the noblest of the race, whose magnificence was so well appreciated by the ancient Mexican emperors, that none but members of the royal family were permitted to adorn themselves with its flowing plumes. The whole upper parts of this bird, its fine coronal crest of erectile plumes, its shoulder-hackles, or long lance-shaped feathers, that droop over the sides, and the elongated tail-coverts which hang down beyond the tail to a length of three feet or more, curving elegantly under the bird, as it sits on a branch, are of the richest golden green, shining with a satiny radiance. The under parts are of a splendid scarlet, and the tail feathers are white, with broad black bars.

More enchanting than mere colour, however rich and glowing this may be, is the fine metallic reflection which we see on the plumage of many tropical birds. The Rifle-bird of Australia might be seen sitting on a tree, and be passed by with contempt as a mere crow, while the eye was attracted to a more gaily-hued parrot by its side. But viewed close at hand, in the full blaze o