AS APPLIED TO MAN. 345 



mana, and by this long persistence it must have ac- 

 quired such a powerful hereditary tendency, that we 

 should expect it to reappear continually even after it 

 had been abolished by ages of the most rigid selection ; 

 and we may feel sure that it never could have been 

 completely abolished under the law of natural selec- 

 tion, unless it had become so positively injurious as to 

 lead to the almost invariable extinction of individuals 

 possessing it. 



The constant absence of Hair from certain parts of 

 Man's Body a remarkable Phenomenon. 



In man the hairy covering of the body has almost 

 totally disappeared, and, what is very remarkable, it 

 has disappeared more completely from the back than 

 from any other part of the body. Bearded and beard- 

 less races alike have the back smooth, and even when 

 a considerable quantity of hair appears on the limbs 

 and breast, the back, and especially the spinal region, 

 is absolutely free, thus completely reversing the charac- 

 teristics of all other mammalia. The Ainos of the Kurile 

 Islands and Japan are said to be a hairy race ; but Mr. 

 Bickmore, who saw some of them, and described them 

 in a paper read before the Ethnological Society, gives 

 no details as to where the hair was most abundant, 

 merely stating generally, that " their chief peculiarity 

 is their great abundance of hair, not only on the head 

 and face, but over the whole body." This might very 

 well be said of any man who had hairy limbs and 

 breast, unless it was specially stated that his back was 



