Chap. XX. 
SEXUAL selection: man. 
357 
intermixtures with the Georgians 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 Georgian 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 makes this state- 
ment, says that the v/omen of San-Giuliano are famous 
at the present day as the most beautiful in the island, 
and are sought by artists as models. But it is obvious 
that the evidence in the above cases is doubtful. 
The following case, though relating to savages, is well 
worth giving from its curiosity. Mr. Winwood Eeade 
informs me that the Jollofs, a tribe of negroes on the 
west coast of Africa, are remarkable for their uni- 
formly fine appearance.” A friend of his asked one of 
these men, ‘-How is it that every one whom I meet is 
so fine-looking, not only your men, but your women ? 
The Jollof 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 appearance ot‘ his 
tribe, to the long-continued elimination of the ugly 
^ These quotations are taken from Lawrence Lectures on Physi- 
ology,' &c. 1822, p. 393), who attributes the beauty of the upper classes 
in England to the men having long selected the more beautiful women. 
^ “ Anthropologic,” ‘ Eevue des Cours Scientitiques,’ Oct. 1838, p. 
721. 
