So it is with the music of birds.

We may infer from all this that a nearly similar taste for beautiful colours and for musical sounds runs through a large part of the animal kingdom.

When the female is as beautifully coloured as the male, which is not rarely the case with birds and butterflies, the cause apparently lies in the colours acquired through sexual selection having been transmitted to both sexes, instead of to the males alone.

How the sense of beauty in its simplest form--that is, the reception of a peculiar kind of pleasure from certain colours, forms and sounds--was first developed in the mind of man and of the lower animals, is a very obscure subject.

The same sort of difficulty is presented if we enquire how it is that certain flavours and odours give pleasure, and others displeasure.