SECONDARY SEXUAL CHARACTERS. 687 



sexual selection, it is well to bear in mind the New Zea- 

 land proverb: " There is no woman for a hairy man." All 

 who have seen photographs of the Siamese hairy family 

 will admit how ludicrously hideous is the opposite extreme 

 of excessive hairiness. And the king of Siam had to bribe 

 a man to marry the first hairy woman in the family; and 

 she transmitted this character to her young offspring of 

 both sexes.* 



Some races are much more hairy than others, especially 

 the males; but it must not be assumed that the more hairy 

 races, such as the Europeans, have retained tlieir j^rimor- 

 dial condition more completely than the naked races, such 

 as the Kalmucks or Americans. It is more probable that 

 the iiairiness of the former is due to partial reversion; for 

 characters which have been at some it>rmer period long in- 

 herited are always apt to return. We have seen that idiots 

 are often very hairy, and they are apt to revert in other 

 character to a lower animal type. It does not a])pear that 

 a cold climate has been influential in leading to this kind 

 of reversion; excepting perhaps with the negroes, w^ho have 

 been reared during several generations in the United 

 States, f and possibly with the Ainos, who inhabit the 

 northern islands of the Japan archipelago. But the laws 

 of inheritance are so complex that we can seldom under- 

 stand their action. If the greater hairiness of certain 

 races be the result of reversion, unchecked by any form of 

 selection, its extreme variability, even within the limits of 

 the same race, ceases to be remarkable. J 



* " The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," 

 vol. ii, 1868, p. 327. 



f " Investigations into Military and Anthropological Statistics of 

 American Soldiers," by B. A. Gould, 1869; p. 568: Observations 

 were carefully made on tlie hairiness of 2,129 black and colored 

 soldiers, while they were bathing; and by looking to the published 

 table, "it is manifest at a glance that there is but little, if any, dif- 

 ference between the white and the black races in this respect." It is, 

 however, certain that negroes in their native and much hotter land 

 of Africa, have remarkably smooth bodies. It should be particularly 

 observed, that both pure' blacks and mulattoes were included in 

 the above enumeration; and this is an unfortunate circumstance, as 

 in accordance with a principle, the truth of which I have elsewhere 

 proved, crossed races of man would be eminently liable to revert to 

 the primordial hairy character of their early ape-like progenitors. 



X Hardly any view advanced in this work has met with so much 

 disfavor (see for mstftnce, Spengel, ' Die Forte^Uritte des Darwiu- 



