SEXUAL SELECTION IN RELATION TO MAN 755 



is found in the Sandwich Islands"; but this may be chiefly 

 due to tbeir better food and manner of life. 



The old traveller Chardin, in describing the Persians, 

 says their "blood is now highly refined by frequent inter- 

 mixtures with the Greorgians and Circassians, two nations 

 which surpass all the world in personal beauty. There is 

 hardly a man of rank in Persia who is not born of a Geor- 

 gian or Circassian mother." He adds that they inherit their 

 beauty, "not from their ancestors^ for without the above 

 mixture the men of rank in Persia, who are descendants 

 of the Tartars, would be extremely ugly." ' Here is a more 

 curious case; the priestesses who attended the temple of 

 Venus Erycina at San Giuliano, in Sicily, were selected 

 for their beauty out of the whole of Greece; they were 

 not vestal virgins, and Quatrefages,' who states the fore- 

 going fact, says that the women of San Giuliano are now 

 famous as the most beautiful in the island, and are sought 

 by artists as models. But it is obvious that the evidence 

 in all the above cases is doubtful. 



The following case, though relating to savages, is well 

 worth giving from its curiosity. Mr. Winwood Reade in- 

 forms me that the JoUofs, a tribe of negroes on the west 

 coast of Africa, "are remarkable for their uniformly fine 

 appearance." A friend of his asked one of these men, 

 "How is it that every one whom I meet is so fine look- 

 ing, not only your men, but your women?" The JoUof 

 answered, "It is very easily explained: it has always been 

 our custom to pick out our worse-looking slaves and to sell 

 them." It need hardly be added that, with all savages, 

 female slaves serve as concubines. That this negro should 

 have attributed, whether rightly or wrongly, the fine ap- 

 pearance of his tribe to the long-continued elimination of 

 the ugly women is not so surprising as it may at first ap- 



^ These quotations are taken from Lawrence ("Lectures on Physiology," 

 etc., 1822, p. 393), who attributes the beauty of the upper elasaea in England 

 to the men having long selected the more beautiful women. 



s " Anthropologie, " "Eevue des Oours Scientifiques," Oct. 1858, p. 721. 



