CiiAP. XX. MANNER OF ACTION. 869 



a larfrer number of cloofs or other animals, would have 

 succeeded in rearing a greater average number of off- 

 spring, than would the weaker, poorer and lower 

 members of the same tribes. There can, also, be no 

 doubt that such men would generally have been able 

 to select the more attractive women. At present the 

 chiefs of nearly every tribe throughout the world suc- 

 ceed in obtaining more than one wife. Until recently, 

 as I hear from ]\Ir. Mantell, almost every girl in New 

 Zealand, who was pretty, or promised to be pretty, 

 was iaipu to some chief. With the Kafirs, as Mr. C. 

 Hamilton states,^^ " the chiefs generally have the pick 

 *' of the women for many miles round, and are most 

 " persevering in establishing or confirming their privi- 

 *•■ lege." We have seen that each race has its own 

 style of beauty, and we know that it is natural to man 

 to admire each characteristic point in his domestic ani- 

 mals, dress, ornaments, and personal appearance, when 

 carried a little beyond the common standard. If then 

 the several foregoing propositions be admitted, and I 

 cannot see that they are doubtful, it would be an in- 

 explicable circumstance, if the selection of the more 

 attractive women by the more powerful men of each 

 tribe, who would rear on an average a greater number 

 of children, did not after the lapse of many generations 

 modify to a certain extent the character of the tribe. 



With our domestic animals, when a foreign breed 

 is introduced into a new country, or when a native 

 breed is long and carefully attended to, either for use or 

 ornament, it is found after several generations to have 

 undergone, whenever the means of comparison exist, a 

 greater or less amount of change. This follows from 

 unconscious selection during a long series of generations 



15 ♦ Anthropological Review,' Jan. 1870, p. xvi. 

 VOL. II. 2 B 



