348 THE LIMITS OF NATUEAL SELECTION 



were likely that a character so long persistent in the 

 entire order of mammalia, could have so completely dis- 

 appeared, under the influence of so weak a selective 

 power as a diminished usefulness. 



Marts Naked Skin could not have been produced by 

 Natural Selection. 



It seems to me, then, to be absolutely certain, that 

 a Natural Selection " could not have produced man's 

 hairless body by the accumulation of variations from a 

 hairy ancestor. The evidence all goes to show that 

 such variations could not have been useful, but must, 

 on the contrary, have been to some extent hurtful. If 

 even, owing to an unknown correlation with other 

 hurtful qualities, it had been abolished in the ancestral 

 tropical man, we cannot conceive that, as man spread 

 into colder climates, it should not have returned under 

 the powerful influence of reversion to such a long per- 

 sistent ancestral type. But the very foundation of 

 such a supposition as this is untenable ; for we cannot 

 suppose that a character which, like hairiness, exists 

 throughout the whole of the mammalia, can have be- 

 come, in one form only, so constantly correlated with 

 an injurious character, as to lead to its permanent 

 suppression a suppression so complete and effectual 

 that it never, or scarcely ever, reappears in mongrels 

 of the most widely different races of man. 



Two characters could hardly be wider apart, than 

 the size and development of man's brain, and the dis- 

 tribution of hair upon the surface of his body ; yet 



