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Mr. F. T. Mott, in a paper 'On the Scientific Value of Beauty,' assuming physical beauty to correspond to climax of maturity in any line of development amongst organisms, though that degrees of beauty would serve as measures of grade of development.

Mr. Wallace pointed out that the original germ of beauty in some remote ancestral organism might be a mere accidental circumstance. The idea of the beautiful would, however, go on developing in the same line as the evolution of animals themselves. In this way it was accountable that animals lower than ourselves should take pleasure in the same colours and outlines as we did.—Sir J. Lubbock remarked, that if there were many beautiful things in Nature, there were many also that were undeniably ugly.