376 
SEXUAL SELECTION; MAN. 
Part IL 
to sudden chills, especially during wet weather. As 
Mr. Wallace remarks, the natives in all countries are 
glad to protect their naked backs and shoulders with 
some slight covering. No one supposes that the naked- 
ness of the skin is any direct advantage to man, so 
that his body cannot have been divested of hair through 
natural selection.^^ Nor have we any grounds for be- 
lieving, as shewn in a former chapter, that this can be 
due to the direct action of the conditions to which man 
has long been exposed, or that it is the result of cor- 
related development. 
The absence of hair on the body is to a certain extent 
a secondary sexual character; for in all parts of the 
world women are less hairy than men. Therefore we 
may reasonably suspect that this is a character which 
has been gained through sexual selection. We know 
that the faces of several species of monkeys, and large 
surfaces at the posterior end of the body in other spe- 
cies, have been denuded of hair ; and this we may 
safely attribute to sexual selection, for these surfaces' 
are not only vividly coloured, but sometimes, as with 
the male mandrill and female rhesus, much more 
‘Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection,’ 1870, p. 340. 
Mr. Wallace believes (p. 350) “ that some intelligent power has guided 
“ or determined the development of man ; ” and he considers the hair- 
less condition of the skin as coming under this head. The Eev. T. 
K. Stebbing, in commenting on this view (‘ Transactions of Devonshire 
Assoc, for Science,’ 1870) remarks, that had Mr. Wallace “ employed 
“ his usual ingenuity on the question of man’s hairless skin, he might 
“ have seen the possibility of its selection through its superior beauty 
“ or the health attaching to superior cleanliness. At any rate it is 
“ surprising that he should picture to himself a superior intelligence 
“ plucking the hair from the backs of savage men (to whom, according 
“ to his own account it would have been useful and beneficial), in order 
“ that the descendants of the poor shorn wretches might after many 
“ deaths from cold and damp in the course of many generations,” have 
been forced to raise themselves in the scale of civilisation through the 
practice of various arts, in the manner indicated by Mr. Wallace. 
