296 - 
SEXUAL selection: mammals. 
Part IL. 
we have instinct excited by mere colour, wbich had 
so strong an effect as to get the better of every- 
thing else. But the male did not require this, the 
female being an animal somewhat similar to himself, 
was sufScient to rouse him.”^^ 
In an early chapter we have seen that the mental 
powers of the higher animals do not differ in kind,, 
though so greatly in degree, from the corresponding^ 
powers of man, especially of the lower and barbarous 
races ; and it would appear that even their taste for the 
beautiful is not widely different from that of the Quad- 
rumana. As the negro of Africa raises the flesh on his 
face into parallel ridges or cicatrices, high above the 
natural surface, which unsightly deformities, are con- 
sidered great personal attractions ; ” — as negroes, as 
well as savages in many parts of the world, paint their 
faces with red, blue, white, or black bars, — so the 
male mandrill of Africa appears to have acquired his 
deeply-furrowed and gaudily-coloured face from having 
been thus rendered attractive to the female. No doubt 
it is to us a most grotesque notion that the posterior 
end of the body should have been coloured for the 
sake of ornament even more brilliantly than the face ; 
but this is really not more strange than that the 
tails of many birds should have been especially de- 
corated. 
With mammals we do not at present possess any evi- 
dence that the males take pains to display their charma 
before the female ; and the elaborate manner in which 
this is performed by male birds, is the strongest argu- 
ment in favour of the belief that the females admire,. 
‘Essays and Observations by J. Hunter,’ edited by Owen, 1861,.. 
Yol. i. p. 194:. 
Sir S. Baker, ‘ The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia,’ 1867. 
