IN THE SHETLANDS 279 
any female. It is more probable that the ornaments 
common to both sexes were acquired by one sex, 
generally the male, and then transmitted to the off- 
spring of both sexes.”* 
I have given my reasons for doubting whether this 
last hypothesis really is more probable than the other 
one of a double process of sexual selection—at any 
rate as far as birds are concerned: and I suggest 
that, in their case, the whole question of the relations 
of the sexes to one another should be reconsidered 
after much more careful observation, especially in 
regard to those species where the male and female are 
alike, or where they differ markedly, and are both 
handsome. As to the possibility of the taste for the 
beautiful differing in the two sexes of any bird or 
animal, I cannot see why this should not sometimes 
be the case. One sex is attracted only by the beauty 
of the opposite one, so that if, owing to slight con- 
stitutional .differences between them, the variations 
which occurred in the one were somewhat different to 
those which occurred in the other (which hardly seems 
very unlikely), these might be selected and “added 
up’ —to use Darwin’s expression—along two gradually 
diverging lines, and this would lead, insensibly and 
necessarily, to divergence of taste as between the male 
and the female. The law is for the one sex to admire 
what it gets in the other. Therefore, supposing indi- 
vidual differences in both, and a choice in regard to 
them on the opposite side, taste, in each case, must be 
1 Descent of Man, pp. 225-226, 
