378 SEXUAL selection: man. PartIL 



" for a hairy man." All who have seen photographs of 

 the Siamese hairy family will admit how ludicrously 

 hideous is the opposite extreme of excessive hairiness. 

 Hence the king of Siam had to bribe a man to marry 

 the first hairy woman in the farbily, who transmitted 

 this character to her young offspring of both sexes.^^ 



Some races are much more hairy than others, especi- 

 ally on the male side ; but it must not be assumed that 

 the more hairy races, for instance Europeans, have re- 

 tained a primordial condition more completely than 

 have the naked races, such as the Kalmucks or Ame- 

 ricans. It is a more probable view that the hairiness 

 of the former is due to partial reversion, for characters 

 which have long been inherited are always apt to re- 

 turn. A curious case has been recorded, by Pinel, of an 

 idiot, degraded to the level of a brute, whose back, 

 loins, and shoulders were covered wdth hair, one or two 

 inches in length. Some other analogous cases are like- 

 wise known. It does not appear that a cold climate 

 has been influential in leading to this kind of rever- 

 sion ; excepting perhaps wdth the negroes, who have 

 been reared during several generations, in the United 

 States,^^ and possibly with the Ainos, who inhabit the 



^** ' The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,' 

 vol. ii. 1868, p. 327. 



^' ' Investigations into Military and Anthropological Statistics of 

 American Soldiers,' by B. A. Gould, 1869 ; p. 568 : — Observations 

 were carefully made on the pilosity of 2129 black and coloured soldiers, 

 whilst they were bathing ; and by looking to the published table, " it 

 " is manifest at a glance that there is but little, if any, difference 

 " between the white and the black races in this respect." It is, how- 

 ever, certain that negroes in their native and much hotter land of 

 Africa, have remarkably smooth bodies. It should be particularly 

 observed, that pure blacks and mulattoes were included in the above 

 enumeration ; and this is an unfortunate circumstance, as in accordance 

 with the principle, the truth of which I have elsewhere jn-oved, crossed 

 races would be eminently liable to revert to the primordial hairy 

 character of their early ape-like progenitors. 



