376 
SEXUAL SELECTION: MAN. 
Part II. 
man even under a hot climate, for lie is thus exposed 
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. 1 * Nor have we any grounds for be- 
lieving, as shewn in a former chapter, that this can be 
c ue 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 
vividly in the one sex than in the other. As these 
animals gradually reach maturity the naked surfaces, 
as 1 am informed by Mr. Bartlett, grow larger, rela- 
‘?° ntr,butloris t0 fl *o Theory of Natural Selection,’ 1870, p. 3-16. 
Mr. M allace believes (p. 350) “that some intelligent power has guided 
OT determined the development of man;” and he considers the hair- 
less conditmn of the shin as coming under this head. The Eev. T. 
Iv aebbing, m commenting on this view (‘ Transactions of Devonshire 
A soc. for Science, 18 1 0) remarks, that had Mr. Wallace “employed 
ills usual ingenuity on the question of man’s hairless skin, he might 
„ ha ™, S T P °f a ‘ y ° f its selection its superior beauty 
or tlie health attaching to superior cleanliness/ 1 
