376 SEXUAL selection: man. PartIL 



Mr. Wallace remarks, the natives in all countries are 

 glad to protect their naked backs and shoulders with 

 some slight covering. No one supposes that the naked- 

 ness of the skin is any direct advantage to man, so 

 that ]iis body cannot have been divested of hair through 

 natural selection.^^ Nor have we any grounds for be- 

 lieving, as shewn in a former chapter, that this can be 

 due to the direct action of the conditions to which man 

 has long been exposed, or that it is the result of cor- 

 related development. 



The absence of hair on the body is to a certain extent 

 a secondary sexual character; for in all parts of the 

 world women are less hairy than men. Therefore we 

 may reasonably suspect that this is a character which 

 has been gained through sexual selection. We know 

 that the faces of several species of monkeys, and large 

 surfaces at the posterior end of the body in other spe- 

 cies, have been denuded of hair ; and this we may 

 safely attribute to sexual selection, for these surfaces 

 are not only vividly coloured, but sometimes, as with 

 the male mandrill and female rhesus, much more 

 vividly in the one sex than in the other. As these 

 animals gradually reach maturity the naked surfaces, 



19 ' Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection,' 1870, p. 346. 

 Mr. Wallace believes (p. 350) " that some intelligent power has guided 

 " or determined the development of man ; " and he considers the hair- 

 less condition of the skin as coming under this head. The Eev. T. 

 E. Stebbing, in commenting on this view (' Transactions of Devonshire 

 Assoc, for Science,' 1870) remarks, that had Mr. AVallace "employed 

 " his usual ingenuity on the question of man's hairless skin, he might 

 " have seen the possibility of its selection through its superior beauty 

 " or the health attaching to superior cleanliness. At any rate it is 

 " surprising that he should picture to himself a superior intelligence 

 " i^lucking the hair from the backs of savage men (to whom, according 

 " to his o^^^l account it would have been useful and beneficial), in order 

 " that the descendants of the poor shorn wretches might after many 

 " deaths from cold and damp in the course of many generations," have 

 been forced to raise themselves in the scale of civilisation through the 

 practice of various arts, in the manner indicated by Mr. Wallace. 



