II.] INCIPIENT STRUCTURES. 55 



by any such action. Thus, amongst apes, the female is 

 notoriously weaker, and is armed with much less powerful 

 canine tusks, than the male. When we consider what 

 is known of the emotional nature of these animals, and 

 the periodicity of its intensification, it is incredible that 

 a female wo aid often risk life or limb through her admi- 

 ration of a trifling shade of colour, or a slightly greater 

 though irresistibly fascinating degree of wartiness. 



Yet the males of some kinds of ape are adorned with 

 quite exceptionally brilliant local decoration, and the male 

 orang is provided with remarkable, projecting, warty lumps 

 of skin upon the cheeks. As we have said, the weaker 

 female cannot be supposed to have developed these by 

 persevering and long-continued selection, 1 nor can they be 

 thought to tend to the preservation of the individual. On 

 the contrary, the presence of this enlarged appendage must 

 occasion a slight increase in the need of nutriment, and in 

 so far must be a detriment, although its detrimental effect 

 would not be worth speaking of except in relation to 

 "Darwinism;" according to which, "selection" has acted 

 through unimaginable ages, and has ever tended to sup- 

 press any useless development by the struggle for life. 



In poisonous serpents, also, we have structures which, at 

 all events at first sight, seem positively hurtful to those 



1 Mr. Darwin, in his recently published work on Man, though he 

 abundantly notices these ape sexual characters, does not bring forward 

 a single fact in support of selection on the part of such animals. 

 He assumes that sexual selection has acted in them because he is con- 

 vinced that it acts in birds. We may, however, turn the argument round 

 and say, since such characters can be formed in apes (as they certainly 

 also are in insects) without the action of sexual selection, the unknown 

 cause which has operated in their case may, most reasonably, be supposed 

 to have also acted in the case of birds. 



