372 
SEXUAL SELECTION : MAN. 
Part II. 
men. They borrow the plumes of male birds, with which 
nature decked this sex in order to charm the females. 
As women have long been selected for beauty, it is 
not surprising that some of the successive variations 
should have been transmitted in a limited manner ; and 
consequently that women should have transmitted their 
beauty in a somewhat higher degree to their female 
than to their male offspring. Hence women have be- 
come more beautiful, as most persons will admit, than 
men. Women, however, certainly transmit most of 
their characters, including beauty, to their offspring 
of both sexes; so that the continued preference by 
the men of each race of the more attractive women, 
according to their standard of taste, would tend to 
modify in the same manner all the individuals of both 
sexes belonging to the race. 
With respect to the other form of sexual selection 
(which with the lower animals is much the most com- 
mon), namely, when the females are the selectors, and 
accept only those males which excite or charm them 
most, we have reason to believe that it formerly acted 
on the progenitors of man. Man in all probability owes 
his beard, and perhaps some other characters, to inhe- 
ritance’ from an ancient progenitor who gained in this 
manner his ornaments. But this form of selection may 
have occasionally acted during later times ; for in ut- 
terly barbarous tribes the women have more power in 
choosing, rejecting, and tempting their lovers, or of after- 
wards changing their husbands, than might have been ex- 
pected. As this is a point of some importance, I will give 
in detail such evidence as I have been able to collect. 
Hearne describes how a woman in one of the tribes 
of Arctic America repeatedly ran away from her hus- 
band and joined a beloved man ; and with tlie 
Charruas of S. America, as Azara states, the power of 
