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. We have hitherto, according to promise, been considering the beauty of flowers as detached from all surrounding facts, and isolated from all other parts of the plant. But, in fact, this beauty of the inflorescence of plants is only one phenomenon of a much larger class. The petals and sepals are only leaves; and it is difficult to argue about the character of the flower-leaves and omit from thought the stalk and root-leaves; and these leaves continually possess a wealth of beauty both of form and colour for which no intelligible utility has ever been suggested. The use made of conspicuous leaves in the modern style of bedding-out and the cultivation in hot-houses of what are called foliage plants, will recall this to every one. In many cases the stems of plants, often the veins of the leaves, and often the backs of the leaves, are the homes of distinct and beautiful colouring, for which, so far as I know, no account can be given on the score of use. To enlarge our view yet a little more, the brilliant colours of the fungi and of the lichens, mosses, and sea-weeds, and, lastly, the outburst of varied colours in the autumn--the crimson of the bramble, the browns of the oaks, the red of the maple, the gold of the elm, "the sunshine of the withering fern"--all these present themselves to us as so closely akin to the painted beauty of flowers that we cannot think of the one without the other; and we may well hesitate to accept as satisfactory a theory which can offer no explanation of phenomena so closely akin to those of flowers, except, forsooth, that they are merely accidental. Once again, to widen the range of our mental vision, the beauty of the vegetable world is but a part of that great and complex mass of beauty from which we agreed to segregate it; and viewed as part of that, it must have the same explanation applied to it as the other beautiful phenomena of the world.