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The Descent of Man.
Part III.

races; and nearly all these measurements shew that the males differ much more from one another than do the females. This fact indicates that, as far as these characters are concerned, it is the male which has been chiefly modified, since the several races diverged from their common stock.

The development of the beard and the hairiness of the body differ remarkably in the men of distinct races, and even in different tribes or families of the same race. We Europeans see this amongst ourselves. In the Island of St. Kilda, according to Martin,[1] the men do not acquire beards until the age of thirty or upwards, and even then the beards are very thin. On the Europæo-Asiatic continent, beards prevail until we pass beyond India; though with the natives of Ceylon they are often absent, as was noticed in ancient times by Diodorus.[2] Eastward of India beards disappear, as with the Siamese, Malays, Kalmucks, Chinese, and Japanese; nevertheless the Ainos,[3] who inhabit the northernmost islands of the Japan Archipelago, are the hairiest men in the world. With negroes the beard is scanty or wanting, and they rarely have whiskers; in both sexes the body is frequently almost destitute of fine down.[4] On the other hand, the Papuans of the Malay Archipelago, who are nearly as black as negroes, possess well-developed beards.[5] In the Pacific Ocean the inhabitants of the Fiji Archipelago have large bushy beards, whilst those of the not distant archipelagoes of Tonga and Samoa are beardless; but these men belong to distinct races. In the Ellice group all the inhabitants belong to the same race; yet on one island alone, namely Nunemaya, "the men have splendid beards;" whilst on the other islands "they have, as a rule, a dozen straggling hairs for a beard."[6]

Throughout the great American continent the men may be said to be beardless; but in almost all the tribes a few short hairs are apt to appear on the face, especially in old age. With the tribes of North America, Catlin estimates that eighteen out of twenty men are completely destitute by nature of a beard;

  1. 'Voyage to St. Kilda' (3rd edit. 1753), p. 37.
  2. Sir J. E. Tennent, 'Ceylon,' vol. ii. 1859, p. 107.
  3. Quatrefages, 'Revue des Cours Scientifiques,' Aug. 29, 1868, p. 630; Vogt 'Lectures on Man,' Eng. translat. p. 127.
  4. On the beards of negroes, Vogt, 'Lectures,' &c. p. 127; Waitz, 'Introduct. to Anthropology,' Engl. translat. 1863, vol. i. p. 96. It is remarkable that in the United States ('Investigations in Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers,' 1869, p. 569) the pure negroes and their crossed offspring seem to have bodies almost as hairy as Europeans.
  5. Wallace, 'The Malay Arch.' vol. ii. 1869, p. 178.
  6. Dr. J. Barnard Davis On Oceanic Races, in 'Anthropolog. Review,' April, 1870, pp. 185, 191.