THE DESCENT OF MAN 



the male orang, may protect their throats when fighting ; for 

 the keepers in the Zoological Gardens inform me that many 

 monkeys attack each other by the throat; but it is not prob- 

 able that the beard has been developed for a distinct pur- 

 pose from that served by the whiskers, mustache, and other 

 tuits of hair on the face; and no one will suppose that these 

 are useful as a protection. Must we attribute all these ap- 

 pendages of hair or skin to mere purposeless variability in 

 the male? It cannot be denied that this is possible; for 

 in many domesticated quadrupeds certain characters, ap- 

 parently not derived through reversion from any wild 

 parent-form, are confined to the males, or are more de- 

 veloped in them than in the females — for instance, the 

 hump on the male zebu-cattle of India, the tail of fat- 

 tailed rams, the arched outline of the forehead in the 

 males of several breeds of sheep, and, lastly, the mane, 

 the long hairs on the hindlegs, and the dewlap of the male 

 of the Berbura goat." The mane, which occurs only in 

 the rams of an African breed of sheep, is a true secondary 

 sexual character, for, as I hear from Mr. Winwood Eeade, 

 it is not developed if the animal be castrated. Although 

 we ought to be extremely cautious, as shown in my work 

 on "Variation Under Domestication," in concluding that 

 any character, even with animals kept by semi-civilized 

 people, has not been subjected to selection by man, and 

 thus augmented, yet in the cases just specified this is im- 

 probable; more especially as the characters are confined to 

 the males, or are more strongly developed in them than in 

 the females. If it were positively known that the above 

 African ram is a descendant of the same primitive stock 

 as the other breeds of sheep, and if the Berbura male goat 

 with his mane, dewlap, etc., is descended from the same 

 stock as other goats, then, assuming that selection has not 



'* See the chapters on these several animals in vol. I of my "Variation of 

 Animals under Domestication"; also vol. ii. p. 13; also chap. xx. on the 

 practice of selection by semi-civilized people. For the Berbura goat, see Dr. 

 Gray, "Catalogue," ibid., p. 151. 



