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Show 374 SEXUAL SELECTION: MAN. PART II. wives. The girls, before consenting to be betrothed, compel the men to shew themselves off, first in front and then behind, and " exhibit their paces." They have been known to propose to a man, and they not rarely run away with a favoured lover. With the degraded bush-women of f?. Africa, "when a girl has "grown up to womanhood without having been be~ "trothed, which, however, docs not often happen, her "lover must gain her approbation, as well as that of ''the parents." 18 Mr. Win wood Reade made inquiries for me with respect to the negroes of vV estern Africa, and he informs me that "the women, at least among " the more intelligent Pagan tribes, have no difficulty " in getting the husbands whom they may desire, al" though it is considered unwomanly to ask a man to " marry them. They are quite capable of falling in " love, anrl of forming tender, passionate, and faithful " attachments." vVe thus see that with savages the women are not in quite so abject a state in relation to marriage as has often been supposed. They can tempt the men whom they prefer, and can sometimes reject those whom they dislike, either before or after marriage. Preference on the part of the women, steadily acting in any one direction, would ultimately affect the character of the tribe; for the women would generally choose not merely the handsomer men, according to their standard of taste, 18 Azara, 'Voyages,' &c. tom. ii. p. 23. Dobrizhoffer, 'An Account of the Abipones,' val. ii. 1822, p. 207. Williams on tho 1•'iji I slanders, as quoted Ly Lubbock, 'Origin of Civilisation,' 1870, p. 79. On the Fucginns, King and FitzRoy, 'Voyages of the Adventure and B eagle,' val. ii. 1839, p. 182. On the Kalmucks, quoted by 1\i'Lcnnnn, 'Primitive M~trriAgc,' 1865, p. 32. On the Malays, Lubbock, ibid. p. 76. The Rev. J. Shooter,' On the Kafirs of Natal,' 1857, p. 52-60. On the Bush-women, Burchell, ' 'l'ravels in S. Africa,' val. ii. 1824, p. 59. •C ilAP. XX. ABSENCE OF HA.Ill. 375 but those who were at the same time best able to defend .and support them. Such well-endowed pairs would •Commonly rear a larger number of offspring than the less well endowed. The same result would obviously follow in a still more marked manner if there was selection on both sides; that is if the more attractive, and at the same time more powerful men were to prefer, and were preferred by, the more attractive women. And these two forms of selection seem actually to have occurretl, whether or not simultaneously, with mankind, especially during the earlier periods of our long history. Vve will now consider in a little more detail, relu. tively to sexual selection, some of the characters which distinguish the several races of man from each other and from the lower animals, namely, the more or less complete absenc.e of hair from the body and the colour of the skin. We need say nothing about the great .diversity in the shape of the features and of the skull between the different races, as we have seen in the last .chapter how different is the standard of beauty in these respects. These characters will therefore probably have been acted on through sexual selection; but we have no means of judging, as far as I can see, whether they have been acted on chiefly through the male or female .side. The musical faculties of man have likewise been already discussed. Absence of Hair on the Body, and its Development on .the Face and Head.-From the presence of the woolly hair or lanugo on the human footus, and of rudimentary hairs scattered over the body during maturity, we may infer that man is descended from some animal which was born hairy and remained so during life. The loss .of hair is an inconvenience and probably an injury to .man even under a hot climate, for he is thus exposed |