SIGHT.
135
will perhaps aid us in estimating the importance for our pre¬
sent subject of the sense which we have now to attack.
Amongst natural aesthetic products owing their beauty to
visual qualities we may mention, in the organic world, briglit-
hued flowers, green leaves, plants or trees, and coloured
foliage ; sea anemones and other brilliant radiata ; shells of
mollusca or articulata ; butterflies, beetles, and moths ; birds
of bright or delicate plumage ; and many graceful or beau¬
tiful mammals, such as the antelope, the zebra, the tiger, and
the hare. Here, too, we must place the beauty of human
beings, man or woman, adult or child. In the inorganic
world, we have gems and precious stones : marble, amber,
jet, and porphyry ; the various metals, especially gold and
silver ; with all the coloured woods, stones, sands, and clays.
Amongst effects of light in a more transitory form may be
reckoned the rainbow and the hues of sunset, the solar spec¬
trum, the dew-drop, and iridescence generally on water, ice,
crystals, or thin plates of any transparent substance. ^Ve
have direct light in the sun, fixed stars, fire-flies, glow-worms,
and the phosphorescence of the sea. Amongst larger collec¬
tions of natural objects we may notice woods, valleys, moun¬
tains, rivers, lakes, glaciers, rocks, waterfalls, the stormy
ocean, the blue expanse of heaven, and the autumn tints
upon the forest. All these, combined, go to make up what
we call scenery. To this list we must add the artificial pro¬
ducts which man has wrought out of these natural objects or
agencies. Beginning with the feathers, shells, and pebbles
of the savage, we go up through all the grades of dress, dyed
cloths, purple and fine linen, silk, lace, furs, jewellery, and