774 THE DESCENT OF MAN 



sexual selection, it is well to bear in mind the New Zea- 

 land proverb, "There is no woman for a hairy man." All 

 who have seen photographs of the Siamese hairy family 

 will admit how ludicrously hideous is the opposite extreme 

 of excessive hairiness. And the king of Siam, had to bribe 

 a man to marry the first hairy woman in the family; and 

 she transmitted this character to her young offspring of 

 both sexes." 



Some races are much more hairy than others, especially 

 the males; but it must not be assumed that the more hairy 

 races, such as the European, have retained their primordial 

 condition more completely than the naked races, such as 

 the Kalmucks or Americans. It is more probable that the 

 hairiness of the former is due to partial reversion ; for char- 

 acters which have been at some former period long inherited 

 are always apt to return. We have seen that idiots are often 

 very hairy, and they are apt to revert in other characters to 

 a lower animal type. It does not appear that a cold climate 

 has been influential in leading to this kind of reversion; ex- 

 cepting perhaps with the negroes who have been reared dur- 

 ing several generations in the United States," and possibly 

 with the Ainos, who inhabit the northern islands of the 

 Japan archipelago. But the laws of inheritance are so 

 complex that we can seldom understand their action. If 

 the greater hairiness of certain races be the result of rever- 

 sion, unchecked by any form of selection, its extreme vari- 



^ "The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," vol. ii., 

 1868, p. 327. 



^ "Investigations into Military and Anthropological statistics of American 

 Soldiers," by B. A. Gould, 1869, p. 568: Observations were carefully made 

 on the hairiness of 2,129 black and colored soldiers while they were bathing; 

 and by looking to the published table, "it is manifest at a glance that there is 

 but little, if any, difference between the white and the black races in thia 

 respect." II is, however, certain that negroes in their native and much hotter 

 land of Africa have remarkably smooth bodies. It should be particularly ob- 

 served that both pure blacks and mulattoes were included in the above enu- 

 meration; and this is an unfortunate circumstance, as, in accordance with a 

 principle the truth of which I have elsewhere proved, crossed races of man 

 would be eminently liable to revert to the primordial hairy charttcter of th^ 

 early ape-like progenitors. 



