380 SEXUAL SELECTION: MAN. Part IL 
races having retained their beards from primordial 
times, than in the case of the hair on the body; for 
with those Qnadrumana, in which the male has a larger 
beard than that of the female, it is fully developed 
only at maturity, and the later stages of development 
may have been exclusively transmitted to mankind. 
We should then see what is actually the case, namely, 
our male children, before they arrive at maturity, as 
destitute of beards as are our female children. On the 
other hand the great variability of the beard within 
the limits of the same race and in different races indi- 
cates that reversion has come into action. However 
this may be, we must not overlook the part which 
sexual selection may have played even during later 
times ; for we know that with savages, the men of the 
beardless races take infinite pains in eradicating every 
hair from their faces, as something odious, whilst the 
men of the bearded races feel the greatest pride in their 
beards. The women, no doubt, participate in these 
feelings, and if so sexual selection can hardly have 
failed to have effected something in the course of later 
times.^^ 
It is rather difficult to form a judgment how the long 
Mr. Sproat (' Scenes and Studies of Savage Life/ 1 868, p. 2a> 
suggests, with reference to the beardless i^atives of Vancouver's Island, 
that the custom of plucking out the hairs on the face, “ continued from. 
“ one generation to another, would perhaps at last produce a race 
“ distinguishable by a thin and straggling growth of beard.” But the 
custom would not have arisen until the beard had already become, 
from some independent cause, greatly reduced. Nor have we any direct 
evidence that the continued eradication of the hair would lead to any 
inheiited effect. Owing to this cause of doubt, I have not hitherto 
alludeti to the belief held by some distinguished ethnologists, for in- 
stance M. Gosse of Geneva, that artificial modifications of the skull 
tend to be inherited. I have no wish to dispute this conclusion ; and 
we now know from Dr. Brown-Sequard’s remarkable observations, espe- 
cially those recently communicated (1870) to the Britisli Association, 
that with guinea-pigs the effects of operations are inherited. 
