SEXUAL SELECTION IN RELATION TO MAN 771 



Mr. Winwood Eeade made inquiries for me with respect 

 to the negroes of Western Africa, and he informs me that 

 "the women, at least among the more intelligent Pagan 

 tribes, have no difficulty in getting the husbands whom 

 they may desire, although it is considered unwomanly to 

 ask a man to marry them. They are quite capable of fall- 

 ing in love, and of forming tender, passionate, and faithful 

 attachments." Additional cases could be given. 



We thus see that with savages 'the women are not in 

 quite so abject a state in relation to marriage as has often 

 been supposed. They can tempt the men whom they prefer, 

 and can sometimes reject those whom they dislike, either be- 

 fore 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 largpr 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 attractive women. And this double form of selec- 

 tion 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 

 characters which distinguish the several races of man from 

 one another 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 dif- 



mucka, quoted by M'Lennan, "Primitive Marriage," 1865, p. 32. On the 

 Malays, Lubbock, ibid., p. 76. The Eev. J. Shooter, "On the Kafirs of Natal," 

 185t, pp. 52-60. Mr. D. Leslie, "Kafir Character and Customs," 1871, p. 4. 

 On the Bushmen, Burchell, "Travels in S. Africa," vol. ii., 1824, p. 59. On 

 the Koraks by McKennau, as quoted by Mr. "Wake, in "Anthropologia," Oct. 

 1873, p. 75. 



