SECONDARY SEXUAL CHARACTERS. 680 



pride in their beards. The women, no doubt, participate 

 in these feelings, and if so sexual selection can hardly have 

 failed to have effected something in the course of later 

 times. It is also possible that the long-continued habit o* 

 eradicating the hair may have produced an inherited effect. 

 Dr. Brown-Sequard has shown that if certain animals are 

 operated on in a particular manner their offspring are 

 affected. Further evidence could be given of the inherit- 

 ance of the effects of mutilations; but a fact lately ascer- 

 by Mr. Salvin * has a more direct bearing on the present 

 question; for he has shown that the motmots, which are 

 known habitually to bite off the barbs of the two central 

 tail-feathers, have the barbs of these feathers naturally 

 somewhat reduced. f Nevertheless, with mankind the 

 habit of eradicating the beard and the hairs on the body 

 would probably not have arisen until these had already 

 become by some means reduced. 



It is difficult to form any judgment as to how the hair 

 mi the head became developed to its present great length 

 in many races. EschrichtJ; states that in the human fetus 

 the hair on the face daring the fifth month is longer than 

 that on the head; and this indicates that our semi-human 

 progenitors were not furnished with long tresses, which 

 must, therefore, have been a late acquisition. This is like- 

 wise indicated by the extraordinary difference in the length 

 of the hair in the different races; in the negro the hair 

 forms a mere curly mat; with us it is of great length, and 

 with the American natives it not rarely reaches to the 

 ground. Some species of Semnopithecus have their heads 

 covered with moderately long hair, and this probably serves 

 ;is uii ornament and was acquired through sexual selection. 

 The same view may, perhaps, be extended to mankind, for 

 we know that long tresses are now and were formerly much 

 admired, as may be observed in the works of almost every 

 poet. St. Paul says: "It a woman have long hair it is a 



* Ou the tail-feathers of Momotus, " Proc. Zoolog. Soc.," 1873, p. 



429 



f Mr. Sproat has suggested (" Scenes and Studies of Savage Life,** 

 1868, p. 25) this same view. Some distinguished ethnologists, among 

 others M. Gosse of Geneva, believe that artificial modifications of the 

 skull tend to be inherited. 



J Uber die Richtung," ibid, a. #). 



