Sexual Dissimilarity 



It is perhaps worthy of note that, after the 

 most successful of her suitors has succeeded in 

 securing the hen, it may happen that a dis- 

 appointed rival makes love to her in the absence 

 of her lord and master and thereby nullifies the 

 effect of her previous selection. 



It is to be observed that, even if we take it as 

 proved, as Darwin believed, that the hens alone 

 exercise a choice of mates, and that they select 

 the most beautiful of their suitors, we are still 

 far from arriving at an explanation of the fact 

 that the males alone have acquired beauty. 

 Admitting that the hens always mate with the 

 most beautiful cocks, we should expect the off- 

 spring of each union to be all more or less alike 

 in beauty that is to say, more beautiful than the 

 mother and less so than the cock. How are we 

 to explain the one - sided inheritance of this 

 beauty ? Why is it confined to the cocks ? 



In order to meet this objection Darwin had to 

 call to his aid unknown laws of inheritance. 

 " The laws of inheritance," he writes (Descent of 

 Man, p. 759), " irrespectively of selection, appear 

 to have determined whether the characters 

 acquired by males for the sake of ornament, for 

 producing various sounds, and for fighting 

 together, have been transmitted to the males 

 alone or to both sexes, either permanently or 

 periodically, during certain seasons of the year. 

 Why various characters should have been trans- 



