Chap. XX. 
ABSENCE OF HAIB. 
375 
but those who were at the same time best able to defend 
and support them. Such well-endowed pairs would 
commonly rear a larger number of offspring than the 
less well endowed. The same result would obviously 
follow in a still more marked manner if there was selec- 
tion on both sides ; that is if the more attractive, and 
at the same time more powerful men w^ere to prefer, 
and were preferred by, the more attractive women. 
And these two forms of selection seem actually to have 
occurred, whether or not simultaneously, with mankind, 
especially during the earlier periods of our long history. 
We will now consider in a little more detail, rela- 
tively to sexual selection, some of the characters which 
distinguish the several races of man from each other 
and from the lower animals, namely, the more or less 
complete absence of hair from the body and the colour 
of the skin. We need say nothing about the great 
diversity in the shape of the features and of the skull 
between the different races, as we have seen in the last 
chapter how different is the standard of beauty in these 
respects. These characters will therefore probably have 
been acted on through sexual selection ; but we have no 
means of judging, as far as I can see, whether they 
have been acted on chiefly through the male or female 
side. The musical faculties of man have likewise been 
already discussed. 
Absence of Hair on the Body, and its JDevelopnent on 
the Face and Head , — From the presence of the woolly 
hair or lanugo on the human foetus, and of rudimentary 
hairs scattered over the body during maturity, we may 
infer that man is descended from some animal which 
Avas born hairy and remained so during life. The loss 
of hair is an inconvenience and probably an injury to 
man even under a hot climate, for he is thus exposed 
