Sexual Dissimilarity 
It is perhaps worthy of note that, after the 
most successful of her suitors has succeeded in 
securing the hen, it may happen that a dis- 
appointed rival makes love to her in the absence 
of her lord and master and thereby nullifies the 
effect of her previous selection. 
It is to be observed that, even if we take it as 
proved, as Darwin believed, that the hens alone 
exercise a choice of mates, and that they select 
the most beautiful of their suitors, we are still 
far from arriving at an explanation of the fact 
that the males alone have acquired beauty. 
Admitting that the hens always mate with the 
most beautiful cocks, we should expect the off- 
spring of each union to be all more or less alike 
in beauty—that is to say, more beautiful than the 
mother and less so than the cock. How are we 
to explain the one-sided inheritance of this 
beauty? Why is it confined to the cocks? 
In order to meet this objection Darwin had to 
call to his aid unknown laws of inheritance. 
“The laws of inheritance,” he writes (Descent of 
Man, p. 759), “ irrespectively of selection, appear 
to have determined whether the characters 
acquired by males for the sake of ornament, for 
producing various sounds, and for fighting 
together, have been transmitted to the males 
alone or to both sexes, either permanently or 
periodically, during certain seasons of the year. 
Why various characters should have been trans- 
319 
