360 SEXUAL SELECTION: MAN, [Part H. 



sonably suspect that tliis is a character whicli has been 

 gained through sexual selection. We know that the faces 

 of several species of monkeys, and large surfaces at the pos- 

 terior end of the body in other species, have been denuded 

 of hair; and this we may safely attribute to sexual selec- 

 tion, for these surfaces are not only vividly colored, but 

 sometimes, as with the male mandrill and female rhesus, 

 much more vividly in the one sex than in the other. As 

 these animals gradually reach maturity the naked surfaces, 

 as I am informed by Mr. Bartlett, grow larger, relatively 

 to the size of their bodies. The hair, however, appears to 

 have been removed in these cases, not for the sake of nu- 

 dity, but that the color of the skin should be more fully 

 displayed. So, again, with many birds the head and 

 neck have been divested of feathers through sexual 

 selection, for the sake of exhibiting the brightly-colored 

 skin. 



As woman has a less hairy body than man, and as 

 this character is common to all races, we may conclude 

 that our female semi-human progenitors were probably 

 first partially divested of hair; and that this occurred at 

 an extremely remote j^eriod before the several races had 

 diverged from a common stock. As our female progeni- 

 tors gradually acquired this new character of nudity, they 

 must have transmitted it in an almost equal degree to 

 their young offspring of both sexes ; so that its transmis- 

 sion, as in the case of many ornaments with mammals and 

 birds, has not been limited either by age or sex. There is 

 nothing surprising in a partial loss of hair having been 

 esteemed as ornamental by the ape-like progenitors of 

 man, for we have seen that with animals of all kinds in- 

 numerable strange characters have been thus esteemed, 

 and have consequently been modified through sexual 

 selection. Nor is it surprising that a character in a slight 

 degree injurious should have been thus acquired; for we 



