258 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



apparently a disadvantage to him, has probably been indirectly instru- 

 mental in helping him to attain his present exalted position in the or- 

 ganic scale. For if, as is here suggested, it originally arose from the 

 reactions of the erect attitude, it must have been associated from the 

 first with the most human-like among our ancestors. Again, if it was 

 completed by sexual selection, it must also have been associated with 

 the most aesthetic individuals among the evolving species. And if, as 

 we have seen reason to believe, these two qualities would tend to ac- 

 company one another, then this slight relative disadvantage would be 

 pretty constantly correlated with other and greater advantages, phys- 

 ical and intellectual, which enabled the young species to hold its own 

 against other competing organisms. But, granting this, the disadvan- 

 tage in question would naturally spur on the half-developed ancestors 

 of man to seek such artificial aids in the way of clothing, shelter, and 

 ornament, as would ultimately lead to many of our existing arts. We 

 may class the hairlessness of man, therefore, with such other apparent 

 disadvantages as the helpless infancy of his young, which, by neces- 

 sitating greater care and affection, indirectly produces new faculties 

 and stronger bonds of union, and ultimately brings about the existence 

 of the family and the tribe or nation. And if we look back at the 

 peculiarities which distinguish placental from implacental mammals, 

 the mammalia generally from birds, and birds from reptiles, we shall 

 see that in every case exactly similar apparent disadvantages have 

 been mainly instrumental -in producing the higher faculties of each 

 successive vertebrate development. Hence it would seem that the 

 hairless condition of man, instead of requiring for its explanation a 

 special intervention of some supernatural agent, is strictly in accord- 

 ance with a universal principle, which has brought about all the best 

 and highest features of the most advanced animal types through the 

 unaided agency of natural selection. Fortnightly Review. 



SKETCH OF PEOFESSOE CLIFFOED. 



WILLIAM KINGDON CLIFFORD was born at Exeter, May 4, 

 1845, and at the time of his death, which occurred on the 3d 

 of March, he had therefore not reached the age of thirty-four years. 

 His father was a justice of the peace, and his mother, from whom he 

 inherited a portion of his genius and his constitutional weakness, died 

 early. He first attended the school of Mr. Templeton, of that city, 

 and went to King's College, London, in 1860. In 1863 he entered at 

 Trinity College, Cambridge, in which he secured a foundation scholar- 

 ship and got the honor of second wrangler in the mathematical Tripos 

 of 1867. Soon after taking his degree he was elected to a fellowship 



