AS APPLIED TO MAN. 345 
mana, and by this long persistence it must have ac- 
quired such a powerful hereditary tendency, that we 
should expect it to reappear continually even after it 
had been abolished by ages of the most rigid selection ; 
and we may feel sure that it never could have been 
completely abolished under the law of natural selec- 
tion, unless it had become so positively injurious as to 
lead to the almost invariable extinction of individuals 
possessing it. 
The constant absence of Hair from certain parts of 
Man’s Body a remarkable Phenomenon. 
In man the hairy covering of the body has almost 
totally disappeared, and, what is very remarkable, it 
has disappeared more completely from the back than 
from any other part of the body. Bearded and beard- 
less races alike have the back smooth, and even when 
a considerable quantity of hair appears on the limbs 
and breast, the back, and especially the spinal region, 
is absolutely free, thus completely reversing the charac- 
teristics of all other mammalia. The Ainos of the Kurile 
Islands and Japan are said to be a hairy race; but Mr. 
Bickmore, who saw some of them, and described them 
in a paper read before the Ethnological Society, gives 
no details as to where the hair was most abundant, 
merely stating generally, that “their chief peculiarity 
is their great abundance of hair, not only on the head 
and face, but over the whole body.” This might very 
well be said of any man who had hairy limbs and 
breast, unless it was specially stated that his back was 
