682 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



chiefly to their female offspring. One such case has been 

 described in the order to which man belongs, that of the 

 Rhesus monkey. 



Man is more powerful in body and mind than woman, 

 and in the savage state he keeps her in a far more abject 

 state of bondage than does the male of any other animal; 

 therefore it is not surprising that he should have gained 

 the power of selection. Women are everywhere conscious 

 of the value of their own beauty; and when they have the 

 means, they take more delight in decorating themselves 

 with all sorts of ornaments than do men. They borrow 

 the plumes of male birds, with which nature has decked 

 this sex in order to charm the females. As women have 

 long been selected for beauty, it is not surprising that some 

 of their successive variations should have been transmitted 

 exclusively to the same sex; consequently that they should 

 have transmitted beauty in a somewhat higher degree to 

 their female than to their male offspring, and thus have 

 become more beautiful, according to general opinion, than 

 men. Women, however, certainly transmit most of their 

 characters, including some beauty, to their offspring of both 

 sexes; so that the continued preference by the men of each 

 race for the more attractive women, according to their 

 standard of taste, will have tended to modify in the same 

 manner all the individuals of both sexes belonging to the 

 race. 



With respect to the other form of sexual selection (which 

 with the lower animals is much the more common), namely, 

 when the females are the selectors, and accept only those 

 males which excite or charm them most, we have reason to 

 believe that it formerly acted on our progenitors. Man in 

 all probability owes his beard, and perhaps some other char- 

 acters, to inheritance from an ancient progenitor who thus 

 gained his ornaments. But this form of selection may 

 have occasionally acted during later times; for in utterly 

 barbarous tribes the women have more power in choosing, 

 rejecting and tempting their lovers, or of afterward chang- 

 ing their husbands than might liave been expected. As 

 this is a point of some importance, I will give in detail 

 such evidence as I have been able to collect. 



Hearne describes how a woman in one of the tribes of 

 Art^tic America repeatedly ran away from her husband and 

 joined her lover; and with the Charruas of South America^ 



