Chapter 20 - Page 2

classes are placed under equally favourable conditions of life for the perfect development of the body. Cook remarks that the superiority in personal appearance "which is observable in the erees or nobles in all the other islands (of the Pacific) is found in the Sandwich Islands"; but this may be chiefly due to their better food and manner of life. The old traveller Chardin, in describing the Persians, says their "blood is now highly refined by frequent intermixtures with the Georgians and Circassians, two nations which surpass all the world in personal beauty. There is hardly a man of rank in Persia who is not born of a Georgian or Circassian mother." He adds that they inherit their beauty, "not from their ancestors, for without the above mixture, the men of rank in Persia, who are descendants of the Tartars, would be extremely ugly."* Here is a more curious case; the priestesses who attended the temple of Venus Erycina at San-Giuliano in Sicily, were selected for their beauty out of the whole of Greece; they were not vestal virgins, and Quatrefages,*(2) who states the foregoing fact, says that the women of San-Giuliano are now famous as the most beautiful in the island, and are sought by artists as models. But it is obvious that the evidence in all the above cases is doubtful.

* These quotations are taken from Lawrence (Lectures on Physiology, &c., 1822, p. 393), who attributes the beauty of the upper classes in England to the men having long selected the more beautiful women. *(2) "Anthropologie," Revue des Cours Scientifiques, Oct., 1868, p. 721.

The following case, though relating to savages, is well worth giving for its curiosity. Mr. Winwood Reade informs me that the Jollofs, a tribe of negroes on the west coast of Africa, "are remarkable for their uniformly fine appearance." A friend of his asked one of these men, "How is it that every one whom I meet is so fine looking, not only your men but your women?" The Jollof answered, "It is very easily explained: it has always been our custom to pick out our worst-looking slaves and to sell them." It need hardly be added that with all savages, female slaves serve as concubines. That this negro should have attributed, whether rightly or wrongly, the fine appearance of his tribe to the long-continued elimination of the ugly women is not so surprising as it may at first appear; for I have elsewhere shewn* that negroes fully appreciate the importance of selection in the breeding of their domestic animals, and I could give from Mr. Reade additional evidence on this head.

* Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. i., p. 207.

The Causes which prevent or check the Action of Sexual Selection with Savages.- The chief causes are, first, so-called communal marriages or promiscuous intercourse; secondly, the consequences of female infanticide; thirdly, early betrothals; and lastly, the low estimation in which women are held, as mere slaves. These