i88i.] 
Sexual Distinctions and Resemblances. 
741 
VII. SEXUAL DISTINCTIONS AND 
RESEMBLANCES. 
By Frank Fernseed. 
Vjj|N the “Journal of Science” for 1878 (p. 469) there 
Uh appeared an article on the “ Woman’s Rights Ques- 
^ tion,” considered from a biological point of view. In 
that article the writer showed that the assignment of 
different duties and employments to men and to women 
respectively, which certain political and social agitators 
think proper to call the “ subjection” or “ subjugation” of 
the latter, so far from being peculiar to the human species 
extends throughout the great mammalian class, and when 
calmly considered, is merely an instance of that differentia- 
tion which is a characteristic of all progressive development. 
More recent researches have extended and completed his 
argument, carrying it out even into numerical details. It 
may, therefore, not be uninteresting to present a notice of 
the points of difference between the sexes — morphological 
and physiological — as summarised by M. G. Delaunay in 
the “ Revue Scientifique.” 
We must first mark that in most of the lower sections of 
the animal kingdom the female is the larger, the stronger, 
and the better armed. As instances may be taken, many 
molluscs, especially the Cephalopods, many Cirripedia, 
most of the Annelida, and probably the majority of inseCts. 
Most distinctly is this the case among moths and butterflies, 
and no less among the Hymenoptera. Indeed, among the 
highest forms of this latter order, the bees, wasps, and ants, 
the male is unarmed — comparatively feeble ; and as far as 
we can judge from the structure of the brain, not endowed 
with the same intellectual power as are the females and the 
neuters, which are now well known to be merely modified 
females. 
In some of the Coleoptera, especially the Lamellicornes. 
the male is the larger and stronger, but this is far from 
universal. Among spiders the superiority of the female is 
most signal, the males in some cases being so diminutive 
that they have been, till lately, placed by systematists in 
different species and even genera. Even among vertebrates 
the female is still the larger in many fishes and reptiles. It 
