Page:Sea shells of New Zealand.pdf/15

There is a hackneyed aphorism, worthy of Chesterfieldian reproof, but that we can risk, that “there is no accounting for taste.” Here I venture to differ. I think that where a lack of taste is plainly manifest, we shall find what Oliver Wendell Holmes calls a “mental astigmatism.” More probably there is no mental error of refraction (or if there be, it may be carefully corrected), but merely a wrong viewpoint is taken, even as an indifferent three-quarter face, from another aspect, may prove a lovely and perfect profile. Mediocrity, of course, we shall always have, and even for that we can be grateful; otherwise, how should we be able to value the best? Tastes and inclinations are often merely moods, acquired through environment and nurtured by temperament. “Some men there are love not a gaping pig; others go mad if they behold a cat, a harmless, necessary cat.” And Shakespeare understood human nature like no other man, either before his time or since.

You will be wondering, what in the world has this to do directly or indirectly with conchology? And I will tell you how the viewpoint affects everything. Now, one of the shells to be mentioned later on has been described by a man, well read, cultured and broadminded, as a “battered, uneven shell,” and, according to this meagre description, I found it, for a long time, impossible to identify this particular species. And at last, what did I find? To my agreeable surprise a shell that conjured up a delightful vista of thought, reaching far away back to Tyndall’s “dim twilight of antiquity,” when dragons of tons weight hurtled through the air, and huge saurians wallowed and fought and loved and died in the seething flood flowing through the primeval forest. Then the very roughness of the shell suggested to my mind the old linen-fold panelling of Jacobean mansions, courts and palaces; the colouring, too, is reminiscent of the most luring inspirations of Leighton, soft blendings of tones and delicate draperies; while the