16 
SEXUAL SELECTION. 
Paet II. 
“ female, who appeared to treat all her lovers with 
“the same kindness.” Notwithstanding this last state- 
ment, I cannot, from the several previous considera- 
tions, give up the belief that the males which are 
the most attractive to the females, from their brighter 
colours or other ornaments, are commonly preferred by 
them ; and that the males have thus been rendered 
more beautiful in the course of ages. 
We have next to inquire whether this view can be 
extended, through the law of the equal transmission of 
characters to both sexes, to those groups in which the 
males and females are brilliant in the same or nearly 
the same degree and manner. In such a genus as 
Labrus, which includes some of the most splendid 
fishes in the world, for instance, the Peacock Labrus 
(L. joavo), described , 25 with pardonable exaggeration, as 
formed of polished scales of gold encrusting lapis- 
lazuli, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and amethysts, we 
may, with much probability, accept this belief; for we 
have seen that the sexes in at least one species differ 
greatly in colour. With some fishes, as with many of 
the lowest animals, splendid colours may be the direct 
result of the nature of their tissues and of the surround- 
ing conditions, without any aid from selection. The 
gold-fish (Cyprinus auratus ), judging from the analogy 
of the golden variety of the common carp, is, perhaps, 
a ease in point, as it may owe its splendid colours to 
a single abrupt variation, due to the conditions to 
which this fish has been subjected under confinement. 
It is, however, more probable that these colours have 
been intensified through artificial selection, as this spe- 
cies has been carefully bred in China from a remote 
25 Bory de Saint Vincent, in ‘Diet. Class. d’Hist, Nat.’ torn.ix. ISiU. 
p. 151. 
