Chap. XX. ABSENCE OF HAIR. 377 



as I am informed by Mr. Bartlett, grow larger, rela- 

 tively to the size of their bodies. The hair, however, 

 appears to have been removed in these cases, not for 

 the sake of nudity, but that the colour of the skin 

 should be more fully displayed. So again with many 

 birds the head and neck have been divested of feathers 

 through sexual selection, for the sake of exhibiting the 

 brightly-coloured skin. 



As woman has a less hairy body than man, and as 

 this character is common to all races, we may con- 

 clude that our female semi-human progenitors were 

 probably first partially divested of hair ; and that this 

 occurred at an extremely remote period before the 

 several races had diverged from a common stock. As 

 our female progenitors gradually acquired this new 

 character of nudity, they must have transmitted it in 

 an almost equal degree to their young offspring of both 

 sexes ; so that its transmission, as in the case of many 

 ornaments with mammals and birds, has not been 

 limited either by age or sex. There is nothing sur- 

 prising in a partial loss of hair having been esteemed 

 as ornamental by the ape-like progenitors of man, for 

 we have seen that with animals of all kinds innumerable 

 strange characters have been thus esteemed, and have 

 consequently been modified through sexual selection. 

 Nor is it surprising that a character in a slight degree 

 injurious should have been thus acquired ; for we know 

 that this is the case with the plumes of some birds, and 

 with the horns of some stasrs. 



The females of certain anthropoid apes, as stated in a 

 former chapter, are somewhat less hairy on the under 

 surface than are the males ; and here we have what 

 might have afforded a commencement for the process 

 of denudation. With respect to the completion of the 

 process through sexual selection, it is well to bear in 

 mind the New Zealand proverb, *' there is no woman 



