454 MATRIMONIAL SELECTION. 



tions of reproductive life. But the other qualities, 

 physical or mental, which we prize in women, are 

 the result of matrimonial selection. At first the 

 female was a chattel common to all, or belong- 

 ing exclusively to one, who was by brute force the 

 despot of the herd. When property was divided and 

 secured by law, the women became the slaves of their 

 husbands, hewing the wood, drawing the water, work- 

 ing in the fields ; while the men sewed and washed the 

 clothes, looked after the house, and idled at the toilet, 

 oiling their hair, and adorning it with flowers, arrang- 

 ing the chignon or the wig of vegetable fibre, filing 

 their teeth, boring their ears, putting studs into their 

 cheeks, staining their gums, tattooing fanciful designs 

 upon their skins, tieing strings on their arms to give 

 them a rounded form, bathing their bodies in warm 

 water, rubbing them with lime-juice and oil, perfum- 

 ing them with the powdered bark of an aromatic tree. 

 Decoration among the females was not allowed. It was 

 then considered unwomanly to engage in any but 

 masculine occupations. Wives were selected only for 

 their strength. They were hard, coarse, ill-favoured 

 creatures, as inferior to the men in beauty as the 

 females are to the males almost throughout the animal 

 kingdom. But when prisoners of war were tamed and 

 broken in, the women ceased to be drudges, and became 

 the ornaments of life. Poor men select their domes- 

 tic animals for utility : rich men select them for' 

 appearance. In the same manner, when husbands 

 became rich they chose wives according to their 

 looks. At first the hair of women was no longer 

 than that of men, probably not so long. But long 

 hair is universally admired. False hair is in use all 

 over the world, from the Esquimaux of the arctic 



