282 SEXUAL SELECTION: MAMMALS. [Part II. 



mere color, which had so strong an effect as to get the 

 better of every thing else. But the male did not require 

 this, the female being an animal somewhat similar to him- 

 self, was sufficient to rouse him." 33 



In an early chapter we have seen that the mental 

 powers of the higher animals do not differ in kind, though 

 so greatly in degree, from the corresponding powers of man, 

 especially of the lower and barbarous races ; and it would 

 appear that even their taste for the beautiful is not widely 

 different from that of the Quadrumana. As the negro of 

 Africa raises the flesh on his face into parallel ridges " or 

 cicatrices, high above the natural surface, which unsight- 

 ly deformities are considered great personal attractions " 3 * 

 — as negroes, as well as savages in many parts of the 

 world, paint their faces with red, blue, white, or black bars 

 — so the male mandrill of Africa appears to have acquired 

 his deeply-furrowed and gaudily-colored face from having 

 been thus rendered attractive to the female. No doubt it 

 is to us a most grotesque notion that the posterior end of 

 the body should have been colored for the sake of orna- 

 ment even more brilliantly than the face ; but this is really 

 not more strange than that the tails of many birds should 

 have been especially decorated. 



With mammals we do not at present possess any evi- 

 dence that the males take pains to display their charms 

 before the female ; and the elaborate manner in which this 

 is performed by male birds, is the strongest argument in 

 favor of the belief that the females admire, or are excit- 

 ed by, the ornaments and colors displayed before them. 

 There is, however, a striking parallelism between mam- 

 mals "and birds in all their secondary sexual characters, 

 namely, in their weapons for fighting with rival males, in 



83 'Essays and Observations by J. Hunter,' edited by Owen, 1861, 

 vol. i. p. 194. 



** Sir S. Baker, ' The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia,' 1867. 



