G. GENERAL NATURAL HISTORY AND ZOOLOGY. 15V 



nations, just as in the lower animals. Although natural se- 

 lection must have acted upon man as upon the lower animals, 

 yet Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace agree in the view that, as 

 soon as man's mind had become moderately developed, the 

 action of natural selection would become changed as regards 

 the general structure, and transferred to the mental faculties. 

 This advance from animal to man, it is thought, must have 

 taken place before the dispersal of the race over the world. 



The author next discusses the special affinities of man to 

 the lower animals, by which the line of the genealogy can be 

 traced, and the time and place of his origin, together with the 

 nature and the probable origin of the several races of man. 

 The consideration of this latter subject necessitates the con- 

 sideration of sexual selection. The theory presented by Mr. 

 Darwin depends upon the almost invariable occurrence of a 

 struggle among males for the females a struggle carried on 

 by actual fighting, or by rivalry in voice or in beauty. This 

 produces two sets of modifications in male animals : first, 

 weapons of various kinds have been developed, owing to 

 those best able to fight having most frequently left progeny 

 to inherit their superiority ; and musical organs, bright col- 

 ors, or ornamental appendages, in consequence of the females 

 preferring males so gifted or adorned. This subject is treat- 

 ed of at great length, about five hundred pages of the orig- 

 inal edition being occupied by its consideration. 



The sexual differences in man are stated by Mr. Darwin to 

 be greater than in most species of monkeys, while in their 

 general features and mode of development man agrees re- 

 markably with those animals one of these consisting in the 

 fact that whenever the beard differs in color from the hair on 

 the head, it is always lighter both in man and monkeys. The 

 law of battle for wives still prevails among some savages, just 

 as it does among wild animals ; and the admiration of certain 

 types of form and complexion, as involving the selection of 

 wives and husbands, is considered to have been an important 

 agent in determining both the races and the sexual differences 

 of mankind. In the final summary of the whole argument, 

 contained in the last chapter, Mr. Darwin maintains that the 

 whole evidence leads to the conclusion that man, whatever 

 his present character, mental and physical, bears still in his 

 bodily frame the stamp of a lowly origin. 



