16 SEXUAL SELECTION. Part IL 



"female, who appeared to treat all her lovers with 

 " the same kindness." Notwithstanding this last state- 

 ment, I cannot, from the several previous considera- 

 tions, give up the belief that the males which are 

 the most attractive to the females, from their brighter 

 colours or other ornaments, are commonly preferred by 

 them ; and that the males have thus been rendered 

 more beautiful in the course of ages. 



We have next to inquire whether this view can be 

 extended, through the law of the equal transmission of 

 characters to both sexes, to those groups in which the 

 males and females are brilliant in the same or nearlv 

 the same degree and manner. In such a genus as 

 Labrus, which includes some of the most splendid 

 fishes in the world, for instance, the Peacock Labrus 

 (L. joavo), described,^^ with pardonable exaggeration, as 

 formed of polished scales of gold encrusting lapis- 

 lazuli, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and amethysts, we 

 may, with much probability, accept this belief; for we 

 have seen that the sexes in at least one species differ 

 greatly in colour. With some fishes, as with many of 

 the lowest animals, splendid colours may be the direct 

 result of the nature of their tissues and of the surround- 

 ing conditions, without any aid from selection. The 

 gold-fish (Gyjprmus auratus), judging from the analogy 

 of the golden variety of the common carp, is, perhaps, 

 a case in point, as it may owe its splendid colours to 

 a single abrupt variation, due to the conditions to 

 which this fish has been subjected under confinement. 

 It is, however, more probable that these colours have 

 been intensified through artificial selection, as this spe- 

 cies has been carefully bred in China from a remote 



25 Bory de Saint Vincent, in ' Diet. Class. d'Hist. Nat.' torn. ix. 1826, 

 p. 151. 



