191S J Hawkins, Sexual Selection and Bird Song. 425 



tween the sexes. " The females incline to passivity, the males to 

 activity. The female cochineal insect "spends much of its life 

 like a mere quiescent gall on the cactus plant. The male, on the 

 other hand, in his adult stage is agile, restless, and shortlived." 

 So with the other insects and other animals. The male is more 

 active while the female is passive. 



"For completeness of argument, two other facts may here be 

 simply mentioned, (a) At the very threshold of sex-difference, we 

 find that a little active cell or spore, unable to develop itself, unites 

 in fatigue with a larger more quiescent individual. Here, at the 

 very first is the contrast between male and female, (b) The same 

 antithesis is seen, when we contrast the actively motile, minute, 

 male element of most animals and many plants, with the larger 

 passively quiescent female-cell or ovum. 



"To the above contrast of general habit, two other items may 

 be added, on which accurate observation is still unfortunately very 

 restricted. In some cases the body temperature, which is an index 

 to the pitch of life, is distinctly lower in the females, and has been 

 noted in cases so widely separate as the human species, insects, and 

 plants. In many cases, furthermore, the longevity of the female 

 is much greater. Such a fact as that women pay lower insurance 

 premiums than do men, is often popularly accounted for by their 

 greater immunity from accident, but the greater normal longevity 

 on which the actuary calculates, has, as we begin to see, a far 

 deeper and constitutional explanation. 



" The agility of males is not merely an adaptation to enable that 

 sex to exercise its functions with relation to the other, but is a 

 natural characteristic of the constitutional activity of maleness; 

 and the small size of many male fishes is not an advantage at all, 

 but simply again the result of the contrast between the more 

 vegetative growth of the female and the costly activity of the male 

 So brilliancy of colour, exhuberance of hair and feathers, activity 

 of scent glands, and even the development of weapons, cannot be 

 satisfactorily explained by sexual selection alone, for this is merely 

 a secondary factor. In origin and continued development they are 

 outcrops of a male as opposed to a female constitution. To sum 

 up the position in a paradox, all secondary sexual characters are 

 at bottom primary, and are expressions of the same general habit 



