372 SEXUAL SELECTION : MAN. Part IL 



men. They borrow tlie plumes of male birds, with which 

 nature decked this sex in order to charm the females. 

 As women have long been selected for beauty, it is 

 not surprising that some of the successive variations 

 should have been transmitted in a limited manner ; and 

 consequently that women should have transmitted their 

 beauty in a somewhat higher degree to their female 

 than to their male offspring. Hence women have be- 

 come more beautiful, as most persons will admit, than 

 men. Women, however, certainly transmit most of 

 their characters, including beauty, to their offspring 

 of both sexes ; so that the continued preference by 

 the men of each race of tlie more attractive women, 

 according to tlieir standard of taste, would tend to 

 modify in the same manner all the individuals of both 

 sexes belonging to the race. 



With respect to the other form of sexual selection 

 (which with the lower animals is much the most com- 

 mon), namely, when the females are the selectors, and 

 accept only those males which excite or charm them 

 most, we have reason to believe that it formerly acted 

 on the progenitors of man. Man in all probability owes 

 his beard, and perhaps some other characters, to inhe- 

 ritance from an ancient progenitor who gained in this 

 manner his ornaments. But this form of selection may 

 have occasionally acted during later times; for in ut- 

 terly barbarous tribes the women have more power in 

 choosing, rejecting, and tempting their lovers, or of after- 

 wards changing their husbands, than might have been ex- 

 pected. As this is a point of some importance, I will give 

 in detail such evidence as I have been able to collect. 



Hearne describes how a woman in one of the tribes 

 of Arctic America repeatedly ran away from her hus- 

 band and joined a beloved man ; and with the 

 Cliarruas of S. America, as Azara states, the power of 



