diverged from a common stock. Whilst our female ancestors were
gradually acquiring this new character of nudity, they must have
transmitted it almost equally to their offspring of both sexes whilst
young; so that its transmission, as with the ornaments of many mammals
and birds, has not been limited either by sex or age. There is nothing
surprising in a partial loss of hair having been esteemed as an
ornament by our ape-like progenitors, for we have seen that innumerable
strange characters have been thus esteemed by animals of all kinds, and
have consequently been gained through sexual selection. Nor is it
surprising that a slightly injurious character should have been thus
acquired; for we know that this is the case with the plumes of certain
birds, and with the horns of certain stags.
The females of some of the anthropoid apes, as stated in a former
chapter, are somewhat less hairy on the under surface than the males;
and here we have what might have afforded a commencement for the
process of denudation. With respect to the completion of the process
through sexual selection, it is well to bear in mind the New Zealand
proverb, There is no woman for a hairy man. All who have seen
photographs of the Siamese hairy family will admit how ludicrously
hideous is the opposite extreme of excessive hairiness. And the king of
Siam had to bribe a man to marry the first hairy woman in the family;
and she transmitted this character to her young offspring of both
sexes. (22. The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication,
vol. ii. 1868, p. 237.)
Some races are much more hairy than others, especially the males; but
it must not be assumed that the more hairy races, such as the European,
have retained their primordial condition more completely than the naked
races, such as the Kalmucks or Americans. It is more probable that the
hairiness of the former is due to partial reversion; for characters
which have been at some former period long inherited are always apt to
return. We have seen that idiots are often very hairy, and they are apt
to revert in other characters to a lower animal type. It does not
appear that a cold climate has been influential in leading to this kind
of reversion; excepting perhaps with the negroes, who have been reared
during several generations in the United States (23. Investigations
into Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers, by
B.A. Gould, 1869, p. 568: Observations were carefully made on the
hairiness of 2129 black and coloured soldiers, whilst they were
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