380 SEXUAL SELECTION : MAN. Part II. 



races having retained their beards from primordial 

 times, than in the case of the hair on the body; for 

 with those Qnadrumana, in which the male has a larger 

 beard than that of the female, it is fully developed 

 only at maturity, and the later stages of development 

 may have been exclusively transmitted to mankind. 

 We should then see what is actually the case, namely, 

 our male children, before they arrive at maturity, as 

 destitute of beards as are our female children. On the 

 other hand the great variability of the beard within 

 the limits of the same race and in different races indi- 

 cates that reversion has come into action. However 

 this may be, w^e must not overlook the part which 

 sexual selection may have played even during later 

 times ; for we know that with savages, the men of the 

 beardless races take infinite pains in eradicating every 

 hair from their faces, as something odious, whilst the 

 men of the bearded races feel the greatest pride in their 

 beards. The women, no doubt, participate in these 

 feelino's, and if so sexual selection can hardlv have 

 failed to have effected something in the course of later 

 times.^^ 



It is rather difficult to form a judgment how the long 



" Mr. Sproat ('Scenes and Studies of Savage Life,' 1868, p. 25) 

 suggests, witli reference to the beardless natives of Vancouver's Island, 

 that the custom of plucking out the hairs on the face, " continued from 

 " one generation to another, would perhaps at last produce a race 

 " distinguishable by a thin and straggling growth of beard." But the 

 custom would not have arisen until the beard had already become, 

 from, some independent cause, greatly reduced. Nor have we any direct 

 evidence that the continued eradication of the hair would lead to any 

 inherited effect. Owing to this cause of doubt, I have not hitherto 

 alluded to the belief held by some distinguished ethnologists, for in- 

 stance M. Gosse of Geneva, that artificial modifications of the skull 

 tend to be inherited. I have no wish to dispute this conclusion ; and 

 we now know from Dr. Brown-Se'quard's remarkable observations, espe- 

 cially those recently communicated (1870) to the British Association, 

 that with guinea-pigs the effects of operations are inherited. 



