Chap. XX.] BEARDS. 363 



have been inherited from an ape-like progenitor ; for when 

 there is any difference in tint between the hair of the head 

 and the beard, the latter is lighter colored in all monkeys 

 and in man. There is less improbability in <;he men of 

 the bearded races having retained their beards from pri- 

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

 for with those Quadrumana, 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 indicates that reversion 

 has come into action. However this may be, we 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, while the men of the bearded races feel the 

 greatest pride in their beards. The women, no doubt, 

 participate in these feelings, and if so sexual selection can 

 hardly have failed to have effected something in the 

 course of later times. 23 



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

 gests, with 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 distinguish 

 able by a thin and straggling growth of beard." But the custom would 

 not have arisen until the beard had already become, from some inde- 

 pendent 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 instance M. Gosse of Gene- 

 va, that artificial modifications of the skull tend to be inherited. I have 



