DEVELOPMENT IN DRESS. 41 



animals ; there are many such inventions, and many such variations ; 

 those that are not really beneficial die away, and those that are really 

 good become incorporated by " natural selection," as a new item in 

 our system. I may illustrate this by pointing out how macintosh- 

 coats and crush-hats have become somewhat important items in our 

 dress. 



Then, again, the degree of advancement in the scale of dress may 

 be pretty accurately estimated by the extent to which various " organs " 

 are specialized. For example, about sixty years ago, our present 

 evening-dress was the ordinary dress for gentlemen; top-boots, always 

 worn by old-fashioned " John Bull " in Punch's cartoons, are now re- 

 served for the hunting field ; and that the red coat was formerly only 

 a best coat, appears from the following observations of a " Lawyer of 

 the Middle Temple," in No. 129 of the Spectator: "Here (in Corn- 

 wall) we fancied ourselves in Charles II.'s reign the people having 

 made little variations in their dress since that time. The smartest of 

 the country squires appear still in the Monmouth cock ; and when they 

 go a-wooing (whether they have any post in the militia or not) they 

 put on a red coat." * 



But besides the general adaptation of dress above referred to, there 

 is another influence which has perhaps a still more important bearing 

 on the development of dress, and that is fashion. The love of novelty, 

 and the extraordinary tendency which men have to exaggerate any 

 peculiarity, for the time being considered a mark of good station in 

 life, or handsome in itself, give rise, I suppose, to fashion. This influ- 

 ence bears no distant analogy to the "sexual selection," on which so 

 much stress has recently been laid in the " Descent of Man." Both 

 in animals and dress, remnants of former stages of development sur- 

 vive to a later age, and thus preserve a tattered record of the history 

 of their evolution. 



These remnants may be observed in two different stages or forms : 

 1. Some parts of the dress have been fostered and exaggerated by 

 the selection of fashion, and are then retained and crystallized, as it 

 were, as part of our dress, notwithstanding that their use is entirely 

 gone (e. g., the embroidered pocket-flaps in a court uniform, now sewn 

 fast to the coat). 2. Parts originally useful have ceased to be of any 

 service, and have been handed down in an atrophied condition. 



The first class of cases have their analogue in the peacock's tail, as 

 explained by sexual selection ; and the second in the wing of the 

 apteryx, as explained by the effects of disuse. 



Of the second kind of remnant Mr. Tylor gives very good instances 

 when he says : a " The ridiculous little tails of the German postilion's 

 coat show of themselves how they came to dwindle to such absurd 

 rudiments ; but the English clergyman's bands no longer convey their 



1 See p. 356 of Fairholt's " Costume in England," London, 1846. 

 4 " Primitive Culture," vol. i., p. 16, London, 1871. 



