iSyi.] Notices of Books. 253 



Darwin details the varied contrivances which are found in 

 different sections of the animal kingdom, by which the male is 

 enabled to please or to charm the female by superiority in colour, 

 in adornment, in form, or even in voice ; and shows that the female 

 does exercise a power or choice in selecting the male which pleases 

 her best. He follows Montague and Bechstein in affirming that 

 " the males of song-birds and of many others do not in 

 general search for the female, but, on the contrary, their business 

 in the spring is to perch on some conspicuous spot, breathing 

 out their full and amorous notes, which, by instinct, the 

 female knows, and repairs to the spot to choose her mate ; ' 

 and that " the female canary always chooses the best singer, and 

 that in a state of nature the female finch selects that male out 

 of a hundred whose notes please her most." With an admirable 

 method and logical sequence, Mr. Darwin traces his phenomenon 

 through the animal kingdom, and points out the effect it must 

 have had in gradually improving the race by giving the more 

 fortunately endowed males a preference as the parents of the 

 next generation. Many of the peculiarities of the human 

 species are traced to the same cause, and especially the gradual 

 diminution in the amount of hair in both sexes, through the 

 development of the sense of beauty. 



But, granting the establishment of this principle, what do we gain 

 by it? It seems to us, indeed, to throw the difficulty of accounting 

 for the origin of the higher forms of life only one step backward. 

 The best favoured males are selected in preference by the females; 

 but whence comes the power of the female to discriminate 

 between her rival wooers ? It is obvious that for a hen canary 

 to distinguish between the song of one bird and another, which 

 even to our ears present only a slight shade of difference, or for 

 the turkey hen to pick out her partner who struts in the most 

 fascinating style or displays the most gorgeous plumage, requires 

 the assumption of the possession on her part, not only of powers 

 of observation of a very high order, but also of a not con- 

 temptible aesthetic principle, which must gradually have been 

 produced by insensible accumulations, and cannot have been, 

 according to Darwinian principles, an innate gift or power. Do 

 we, then, arrive any nearer to a solution of the principle which 

 lies at the base of a continuous organic improvement of the race, 

 when we carry back our position from a gradual advance in 

 external characters in the male to a gradual advance in the female 

 of a mental power of appreciating these external characters? 

 We think not. While sexual selection appears abundantly 

 sufficient to account for the one, to what cognate principle can 

 the followers of Mr, Darwin point to explain the other ? Is not 

 the mental development of the female, in fact, a harder problem 

 to solve than the physical development of the male ? 



Darwin's " Descent of Man " is a work that will long hold a 

 place in our literature as a monument of patient and laborious 

 research, and of great impartiality and candour in the results 



