have very close fur, which scarcely at all retards them in their movements when swimming. The elephant and rhinoceros are, indeed, difficult cases to explain; but of course it is not necessary to suppose that no other cause save that which we are considering can ever pro(uce hairlessness. It will be enough if we can show that the cause actually under examination does with reasonable certainty bring about such an effect. If, then, the portion of animals which generally comes in contact with the ground or other external bodies acquires in this manner a hairless conditionshown alike in hands, feet, tail, and belly-what will be the result upon animals which are gradually acquiring the erect position? Of this we can obtain an almost complete series by looking first at the beaver, which rests upon its scaly tail alone; then at the baboons, which rest upon the naked callosities on their haunches; thirdly, at the gorilla; and, last of all, at mankind. 66 The gorilla, according to Professor Gervais, is the only mammal which agrees with man in having the hair thinner on the back, where it is partly rubbed off, than on the lower surface. This is a most important approach to a marked human peculiarity, and is well worthy of investigation. I have myself come upon fresh traces of a gorilla's bed on several occasions," says Du Chaillu, "and could see that the male had seated himself with his back against a treetrunk. In fact, on the back of the male gorilla there is generally a patch on which the hair is worn thin from this position, while the nest-building Troglodytes calvus, or bald-headed nshiego, which constantly sleeps under its leafy shelter on a treebranch, has this bare place on its side, and in quite a different way." "When I surprised a pair of gorillas," he observes elsewhere," the male was generally sitting down on a rock or against a tree." Once more, in a third passage he writes, "In both male and female the hair is found worn off the back; but this is only found in very old females. This is occasioned, I suppose, by their resting at night against trees, at whose base they sleep." And when we inquire into the difference between the sexes thus disclosed, we learn that the female and young generally sleep in trees, while the male places himself in the position above described against the trunk. The gorilla has only very partially acquired the erect position, and probably sits but little in the attitudes common to man. But if a developing anthropoid ape were to grow more and more upright in his carriage, and to lie more and more upon his back and sides, we might naturally expect that the hair upon those portions of his body would. grow thinner and thinner, and that the usual characteristics of the mammalia as to dorsal and sternal pilosity would be completely reversed. This is just what has probably happened in the case of man. In proportion as he grew more erect, he must have lain less and less upon his stomach, and more and more upon his back or sides. For fully developed man, with the peculiar set of his neck, face, and limbs, it is almost impossible to rest upon his stomach. On the other hand, all savage races lie far more upon their backs than even Europeans with their sofas, couches, and easy-chairs; for the natural position of savage man during his lazy hours is to stretch himself on the ground in the sun, with his eyes closed, and with his back propped, where possible, by a slight mound or the wall of his hut. Any person who has lived much amongst negroes or South Sea Islanders, must have noticed how constant is this attitude with men, women, and children, at every stray idle moment. Nor must we forget the peculiar manner in which human mothers must necessarily have carried their infants from a very early period in the development of our race. During the first eighteen months of life the human infant must always be held, or laid, more or less upon its back; and this position will probably tend to check the development of hair upon the dorsal and lateral regions. Next, let us ask what is the actual distribution of hair upon the body of man. Omitting those portions where the ornamental use of hair has specially preserved it, the most hairy region is generally, so far as my observations go, the fore part of the leg or shin. Obviously this is a region very little likely to come in contact with external objects. On the other hand, the most ab solutely hairless places are the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet, after which come the elbows, and at a long interval the knees and knuckles. The back is very hairless, and so are the haunches. But the legs are more hairy than the body, both in front and behind, though less hairy on the calf than on the shin. Now it will be obvious that both by day and night we rest more upon our backs and haunches than upon our legs, the latter being free when we sit down on a chair or bench, doubled in front of us when we squat on the ground (the normal position of savages), and thrown about loosely when we lie down. Especially might we conclude that this would be the case with early races, unembarrassed by the weight of bedclothes. As for the arms, it is noticeable that they still retain the ordinary mammalian habit in being hairier on the back than on the front; and this also is quite in accordance with our present suggestion, because the same differentiating causes have not worked upon the arm as they work upon the back and legs. The peculiar position of the anterior extremities in man, together with the erect posture, makes the arms come much more frequently into frictional contact with the body or clothing on their inner than on their outer surface. Hair grows most abundantly where there is normally least friction, and vice versa. As for the hair which frequently appears upon the chest of robust Europeans and others, I shall return to that point at a later stage. It may be noted, however, that while the first joint of the fingers is hairy, the second joint, answering to the callosity of the gorilla, is generally bare. As man, then, gradually assumed the erect attitude and the reversed habits of sitting and lying down which it necessarily involves, it seems to me that he must have begun to lose the hair upon his back. But such a partial loss will not fully account for his present very hairless condition over the whole body (with trifling exceptions) in the average of all sexes, races, and ages. For this further and complete denudation I think we must agree with Mr. Darwin in invoking the aid of sexual selection, especially when we take into consideration the ornamental and regular character of the hairy adjuncts which man still retains. In the first place, we have external reasons for believing that sexual selection has produced similar results elsewhere, acting upon a like basis of natural denudation. For among the mandrills and some other monkeys the naked callosities, originally produced, as is here suggested, by physical friction, have been utilised for the display of beautiful pigments; and Mr. Bartlett informed Mr. Darwin that as the animals reach maturity the naked surfaces grow larger in comparison with the size of the body. When we look at the great definiteness and strange coloring of these bare patches we can hardly doubt that they have been subjected to some such selective process. But if man once began to lose the hair over the whole of his back, shoulders, and haunches, as well as more partially upon his sides, legs, and arms, he would soon present an intermediate half-hairy appearance which is certainly very ludicrous and shabby-looking. Why this middle stage should displease us, it might be rash to guess; yet one may remember that as a rule throughout the mammalia a partially hairless body would be associated with manginess, disease, and deformity. At any rate, it seems to be the fact that when animals once begin losing their hair, they go on to lose it altogether. One may well believe that among our evolving semi-human ancestors those individuals which had most completely divested themselves of hair, would be the most attractive to their mates; and these would also on the average be those which had most fully adopted the erect attitude with its accompanying alterations of habit. Thus natural selection would go hand in hand with sexual selection (as I believe it always does), those anthropoids which most nearly approached the yet unrealised standard of humanity being most likely to select one another as mates, and their offspring being most likely to survive in the struggle for life with their less anthropoid competitors.* It does not developed ancestor derived from the erect or * On the advantages which man or his halfsemi-erect position, see Darwin Descent of Man, p. 53. seem probable, to me at least, that a naturally hairy species would entirely divest itself of its hair through sexual selection, especially as the first steps of such a process could hardly fail to render it a mongrel-looking and miserable creature; but it seems natural enough that if the original impulse was given by a physical denudation, the influence of sexual selection would rapidly strengthen and complete the process. Indeed, if a hairy animal once began losing its hair, the only beauty which it could aim at would be that of a smooth and shiny naked black skin. Woman is the sex most affected in mankind by sexual selection, as has been often abundantly shown. Hence we should naturally expect the denudation to proceed further in her case than in that of man. Especially among savage and naked races we should conclude that hairlessness on the body would be esteemed a beauty; and we find as a matter of fact that most such races have absolutely smooth and glistening skins. But in Europe, men often develop hair about the chest and legs, though not upon the back and shoulders, while women seldom or never do so. Here we see that the hair reappears in the less differentiated male sex rather than in the more differentiated females, with whom sexual selection has produced greater effects; while it also reappears only on those parts where the origina denudating causes do not exert any influence. Similarly, the smooth-bodied negroes, transported to America, and subjected at once to a change of conditions and to circumstances which would render sexual selection impossible as regards the hairlessness of the body, rapidly re-develop hair upon the chest. For we must remember that sexual selection can only act in this direction while a race remains wholly or mainly naked. Clothing, by concealing the greater part of the skin, necessarily confines the selective process to features, complexion, and figure. As to the poll, beard, whiskers of certain races, we must believe that they are the result of selective preferences acting upon general tendencies derived from earlier ancestors, and, perhaps, aided in the first-mentioned instance by natural selection. The comparative definiteness of these hairy patches, as of the callosities in the monkeys, stamps them at once as of sexual origin. The poll is probably derived by us from some of our anthropoid ancestors, as crests of hair frequently appear upon the heads of the quadrumana. But as man gradually became more erect and less forestine, as he took to haunting open plains and living more in the sunlight, the existence of such a natural covering, as a protection from excessive heat and light upon the head, would doubtless prove of advantage to him; and it might, therefore, very possibly be preserved by natural selection. Certainly it is noticeable that this thick mat of hair occurs in the part of his body which the erect position most exposes to the sunlight, and is thus adaptively analogous to the ridge of hair which runs along the spine or top of the back in many quadrupeds, and which is not visible in any quadrumanous animal that I have examined. The beard also bears marks of a quadrumanous origin, as Mr. Darwin has shown; but its varying presence or absence in certain races affords us a good clue to the general course of evolution in this particular. For amongst the bearded races a fine and flowing beard is universally admired; while amongst the beardless races stray hairs are carefully eradicated, thus displaying the same aversion to the intermediate or half-hairy state, which, as I suppose, has been mainly instrumental in completely denuding the body of man. Certainly it is a fact that while we can. admire a European with a full and handsome development of hair upon the chin and lip, and while we can admire an African or a North American Indian with a smooth and glossy cheek, we turn with dislike from thin and scanty hair either in a European, a negro, or an Asiatic. It seems to me that in every case the general æsthetic feeling of the whole human race is the same; but that in one tribe circumstances have made it easier to produce one type of beauty, while in another tribe other conditions have determined the production of another type. Thus, in a negro, a very black and lustrous skin, clear bright eyes, white teeth, and a general conformity to the normal or average negro features are decidedly pleasant even to Europeans when once the ordinary standard has become familiar ;* while in a European the same eyes and teeth are admired, but a white skin, a rosy complexion, and moderate conformity to the ideal Aryan type are demanded. Each is alike pretty after its own kind, though naturally the race to which we each ourselves belong, possesses in most cases the greatest attractiveness to each of us individually. Of course, both in the beard of man, and in the general hairiness of his body, as compared with woman, allowance must be made for that universal tendency of the male to produce extended tegumentary modifications, which, as Mr. Wallace has abundantly shown, depends upon the superior vigor of that sex. Yet the period when the beard first shows itself, and the loss of color in the hair of both sexes after the reproductive period is past, clearly stamp these modifications as sexual in origin. It must be remembered also, in accounting for the general loss of hair on both back and front of the body, that the older ancestral heredity would tend to make the chest bare, and the newer acquired habits would tend to produce like results upon the back. "In the adult male of the gorilla," says Du Chaillu, "the chest is bare. In the young males which I kept in captivity it was thinly covered with hair. In the female the mammæ have but a slight development and the breast is bare." All this helps us to see how the first steps in the sexually selective process might have taken place, and also why the trunk is on the whole more denuded than the legs. As for the exceptional fact that the arms are hairier on the back than in front, besides the functional explanation already given, we must recollect that the anthropoid apes have long hair on the outer side of the arms, which has probably left this slight memento of its former existence on the human subject. Eschricht has pointed out the curious fact that alike in man * The mutilations of the face and other parts, which often make savages so ugly in our eyes, though not in their own, are due, as Mr. Herbert Spencer has shown, not to æsthetic intentions, but to originally subordinative practices, as marks of subjection to a conquering king or race. and the higher quadrumana this hair has a convergent direction towards the point of the elbow, both from above and from below. Finally, it may be noted that the hairless condition of man, though apparently a disadvantage to him, has probably been indirectly instrumental in helping him to attain his present exalted position in the organic scale. For if, as is here suggested, it originally arose from the reactions of the erect attitude, it must have been associated from the first with the most humanlike amongst our ancestors. Again, if it was completed by sexual selection, it must also have been associated with the most æsthetic individuals among the evolving species. And if, as we have seen reason to believe, these two qualities would tend to accompany one another, then this slight relative disadvantage would be pretty constantly correlated with other and greater advantages, physical and intellectual, which enabled the young species to hold its own against other competing organisms. But, granting this, the disadvantage in question would naturally spur on the half-developed ancestors of man to seek such artificial aids in the way of clothing, shelter, and ornament, as would ultimately lead to many of our existing arts. We may class the hairlessness of man, therefore, with such other apparent disadvantages as the helpless infancy of his young, which, by necessitating greater care and affection, indirectly produces new faculties and stronger bonds of union, and ultimately brings about the existence of the family and the tribe or nation. if we look back at the peculiarities which distinguish placental from implacental mammals, the mammalia generally from birds, and birds from reptiles, we shall see that in every case exactly similar apparent disadvantages have been mainly instrumental in producing the higher faculties of each successive vertebrate And development. Hence it would seem that the hairless condition of man, instead of requiring for its explanation a special intervention of some supernatural agent, is strictly in accordance with a universal principle, which has brought about all the best and highest features of the most advanced animal types through the unaided agency of natural selection. -Fortnightly Review. MADEMOISELLE DE MERSAC. CHAPTER X. IN WHICH MR. BARRINGTON LOSES HIS TEMPER. LOVE, which set Trojans and Greeks by the ears of old, involving pious Æneas and many-counselled Ulysses in a peck of troubles-which led Roman Antony to his death-which was nearly becoming the ruin of David, King of Israel—and which, in all ages, has been the cause of many a wise man's doing many a foolish thing-love it was that had led Saint-Luc-a person noted for his tact and good sense-into the stupid blunder of thrusting himself into the company of four people who were perfectly happy together without him. The very thought, indeed, which in his normal state of mind would have kept him from tacking himself on to the party-namely, a strong suspicion that he was not wanted-had now exercised a directly opposite influence upon him. A perpetual vision of Jeanne and Mr. Barrington wandering together in wild Kabylian solitudes had so beset him by day and driven sleep from his pillow by night, ever since he had found himself alone in Algiers, that at last he could bear it no longer, and, feeling that reality could have no pangs in store for him more bitter than those of imagination, he packed what clothes he required into a small valise, strapped it on to the front of his saddle, and galloped off on the track of the wanderers. And so, having done the distance in a much shorter time than a prudent man would have allowed, he reached Fort Napoléon at length, and earned a chill welcome for himself and a pair of puffy forelegs for his horse. M. de Fontvieille, who happened to be standing at the door of the little inn, enjoying the evening air, pulled a wry face when he recognised the impetuous horseman who drew rein beside him. "What is it you, M. le Vicomte?" he cried, in anything but a joyous tone. Saint-Luc did not seem to notice any want of cordiality in his reception. He swung himself out of the saddle, and held out his hand, exclaiming "What good fortune that I find you still here!'' "How, good fortune? I don't understand you," returned the old gentleman rather testily. "Of course we are here. Where else should we be?" "I feared you might have altered your route and gone to Dellys, or somewhere else," answered Saint-Luc, rather abashed. "I thought," he continued, apologetically, "that as I was unable to start with you, I might venture to follow as soon as I found myself free ; so I set out from Algiers yesterday morning—and here I am.' "So I perceive,' "grunted M. de Fontvieille, not at all mollified; "and charmed as I am to see you, monsieur, I can only regret that you should have put yourself to so much inconvenience, for I fear you will have had your ride for your pains. We start on our return journey early to-morrow morning, Heaven be praised! I confess that years have deprived me of all taste for rough travelling." 66 To-morrow morning!" echoed Saint-Luc, rather blankly. "H'm!nothing can be more certain than that my horse will not be in a state to leave the stable for another four-and-twenty hours at least. But I can easily get him sent back from here in a day or two," he added, brightening. "Perhaps you would kindly allow me to take a seat in your carriage. Or would that incommode you too much?" Poor M. de Fontvieille was not in the best of tempers. As he had said, he was no longer of an age to enjoy roughing it, and any pleasure he might have derived from the contemplation of fine scenery had been completely neutralised of late by the discovery of the growing intimacy between Jeanne and the Englishman. Moreover, he had been kept waiting more than half an hour for his dinner, and the inopportune appearance of Saint-Luc was, at this especial moment, almost too much for him. carriage does not belong to me," he replied crossly; "but I dare say that Léon will have no objection to your taking a place in it; it is made to hold six people at a pinch, I believe. For myself, I have hitherto sat on the box, and I intend to do so for the remainder "The |