594 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



reject those whom they dislike, either before or after marriage. 

 Preference on the part of the women, steadily acting in any one 

 direction, would ultimately affect the character of the tribe; for 

 the women would generally choose not merely the handsomest 

 men, according to their standard of taste, but those who were at 

 the same time best able to defend and support them. Such well- 

 endowed pairs would commonly rear a larger number of offspring 

 than the less favored. The same result would obviously follow 

 in a still more marked manner, if there was selection on both 

 sides; that is if the more attractive, and at the same time more 

 powerful men were to prefer, and were preferred by, the more at- 

 tractive women. And this double form of selection seems actually 

 to have occurred, especially during the earlier periods of our long 

 history. 



We will now examine a little more closely some of the char- 

 acters which distinguish the several races of man from one an- 

 other and from the lower animals, namely, the greater or less 

 deficiency of hair on the body, and the color of the skin. We 

 need say nothing about the great diversity in the shape of the 

 features and of the skull between the different races, as we have 

 seen in the last chapter how different is the standard of beauty in 

 these respects. These characters will therefore probably have 

 been acted on through sexual selection; but we have no means of 

 judging whether they have been acted on chiefly from the male 

 or female side. The musical faculties of man have likewise been 

 already discussed. 



Absence of Hair on the Body, and its Development on the Face 

 and 'Head. — From the presence of the woolly hair or lanugo on 

 the human foetus, and of rudimentary hairs scattered over the 

 body during maturity, we may infer that man is descended from 

 some animal which was born hairy and remained so during life. 

 The loss of hair is an inconvenience and probably an injury to 

 man, even in a hot climate, for he is thus exposed to the scorch- 

 ing of the sun, and to sudden chills, especially during wet weather. 

 As Mr. Wallace remarks, the natives in all countries are glad to 

 protect their naked backs and shoulders with some slight cover- 

 ing. No one supposes that the nakedness of the skin is any direct 

 advantage to man; his body therefore cannot have been divested 

 of hair through natural selection."' Nor, as shown in a former 



" 'Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection,' 1870, p. 346. Mr. 

 Wallace believes (p. 350) "that some intelligent power has guided or 

 "determined the development of man;" and he considers the hairless 

 condition of the skin as coming under this head. The Rev. T. R. Steb- 

 bing, in commenting on this view ('Transactions of Devonshire Assoc. 

 for Science,' 1870) remarks, that had Mr. Wallace "employed his usual 

 "Ingenuity on the question of man's hairless skin, he might have seen 



