352 SEXUAL SELECTION: MAN. [Part II. 



have been periodically severe to an extreme degree. 

 Thus during these primordial times all the conditions for 

 sexual selection would have been much more favorable 

 than at a later period, when man had advanced in his 

 intellectual powers, but had retrograded in his instincts. 

 Therefore, whatever influence sexual selection may have 

 had in producing the differences between the races of 

 man, and between man and the higher Quadrumana, this 

 influence would have been much more powerful at a very 

 .remote period than at the present day. 



On the Manner of Action of Sexual Selection with 

 Mankind. — With primeval men under the favorable con- 

 ditions just stated, and with those savages who at the 

 present time enter into any marriage-tie (but subject to 

 greater or less interference according as the habits of 

 female infanticide, early betrothals, etc., are more or less 

 practised), sexual selection will probably have acted in 

 the following manner : The strongest and most vigorous 

 men — those who could best defend and hunt for their 

 families, and during later times the chiefs or head-men — 

 those who were provided with the best weapons and who 

 possessed the most property, such as a larger number of 

 dogs or other animals, would have succeeded in rearing a 

 greater average .number of offspring, than would the 

 weaker, poorer, and lower members of the same tribes. 

 There can, also, be no doubt that such men would gener- 

 ally have been able to select the more attractive women. 

 At present the chiefs of nearly every tribe throughout 

 the world succeed in obtaining more than one wife. Un- 

 til recently, as I hear from Mr. Mantell, almost every girl 

 in New Zealand, who was pretty, or promised to be 

 pretty, was tapu to some chief. With the Kaffres, as Mr. 

 C. Hamilton states, 15 " the chiefs generally have the pick 



15 'Anthropological Review,' Jan. 1870, p. xvi. 



