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Show 37G SEXUAL SETiF.CTION: MAN. PAUl' IL to sndclen chills, especially during wet weather. As lVIr. Wall ace remarks, the Hati ves in all countries arc· glad to protect their naked backs and shoulders with Rome slight covering. No one supposes that the naked-· ne s of the skin is any diroet advantage to ma11, so that his borly cannot have been divested of hair through natural selection. 19 Nor have we any ground~ for believing, as shewn in a former chapter, that this can be due·to the direct action of the conditions to which man. has long boon exposed, or that it is the re~ult of cor-· related development. Tho absence of hair on the body is to a certain extent a secondarv sexual character; for in all parts of tho world wom~n are less hairy th ::m, men. 'l'herofore 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 largo · s11L'faces at the posterior end of tho body in other spe-· cics, 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 tho male mandrill und female rhesus, much more· 10 'Contributions to tl1e 'l'heory of Natural Selection,' 1870, p. 34G. 1\'Tr. Wallace brliovt>R (p. 350) "that some intelligent power lu:u; guided '' or doterminell tho drvolopment of man;" o.nrl he ronsiders tho ho.irloss COll(lition of tho skin as roming under this h ro.d. 'J'he Hev. 'J'. R Stcb!Jing, ill commenting on this view ('Transactions of Devonshire Assoe. for Science,' 1870) rl·marks, that ho.d Mt·. ·w allace "cmployc<l "hiK Hsual ingenuity on the IJ.nrstion of mn,n's hairless Hkin, he migl1t " ho.vo sren tho pos;; ibility of itl:l srlecti.on through its s11porior branty· " or tho health attaching to superior cleanliness. At o.uy rate it is " snrprising tho.t he should picture to himself a superior intelligenco " plucking the ho.ir from tho backs of savage men (to whom, according " to his own account it would have been useful o.nd beneficial), in order " tl1o.t tho drscendants of tho poor ~:~horn wretches might nJter mo.ny " dro.ths from cold and do.mp in tho co urse of many generations," have been forced to mise themselves in tho scale of civiliso.tion through tho prartico of various :ntH, in tho mnnnor indico.tecl by Mr. Wallo.ce. C IIAP. XX. ABSENCE OF IIAIR. 377 vividly in the one sex than in the other. As those animals gradually roach maturity the naked surfaces, as I am informed by Mr. Bartlett, grow larger, relatively to the size of their bodies. The hair, however, appears to have been removed in these cases, not for the sake of nudity, but that the colour of tho skin should be ll1oro fully displayed. So again with many birds the head and ueck have been divested of feathers through sexual selection, for tLe sake of exhibiting the brightly-coloured skin. As woman has a lesf:l hairy body than man, and as this character is commou to all races, we may conclude that our female semi-human progellitors were probably first partially divested of hair; aud that this occurred at au extremely remote period before the several races had diverged from a common stock. As our female progenitor~ gradually acquired this new cbaracter of nudity, they must have transmitted it in an almost equal degree to their young offspring of both sexes; so that its transmission, as in the case of many omamonts with mammals and birds, hns , not been limited either by age or sex. 'fhere ]:; nothing surprising in a partial loss of hair having Leen esteemed as ornamenk'tl by the ape-like progenitors of man, for we have seen that with animals of all kinds innumerable strange character~ have Leen thus esteemed, aucl havo consequently been modified through sexual selection. Nor i~:J it surprising that a character in a slight degree injurious should have been thus acquired; foL' we know that this i:; the case with the plumes of some birds, and with the horns of some stags. The females of certain anthropoid apes, as stated in a former chapter, are somewhat less hairy on the under surface than are the males ; and here we have what might have afforded a commencement for the process |