188 CHARLES DARWIN. 



birthplace and antiquity, and with an account of the 

 formation of races. 



In the second part Darwin brings forward a large 

 body of evidence in favour of his hypothesis of sexual 

 selection — viz. the view that, in the higher animals, 

 some alteration, especially of the secondary sexual 

 characters, is produced by the preferences and 

 rejections of the sex which is sought by the other. 

 Such results are commonly found in the males as a 

 result of the preferences of the females accumulated 

 through countless generations ; but in some species 

 the females court the males, and are themselves 

 subject to the same process of improvement by 

 selection. 



Opinion is still divided on this most interestmg 

 question. Wallace, more convinced than ever as to 

 the efficiency and scope of natural selection, after 

 first doubting, has finally come to reject sexual 

 selection altogether. Probably the majority of 

 naturalists are convinced by Darwin's arguments 

 and his great array of facts that the principle of 

 sexual selection is real, and accounts for certain 

 relatively unimportant features in the higher animals, 

 and they further accept Darwin's opinion that its 

 action has always been entirely subordinate to natural 

 selection. 



A brief third part considers sexual selection in 

 relation to man. 



Darwin says, in his " Autobiography," that sexual 

 selection and " the variation of our domestic pro- 



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