Page:Descent of Man 1875.djvu/575

Rh Chinese, most of which races have very little hair on the face and he always found that when there was any difference in colour between the hair of the head and the beard, the latter was invariably lighter. Now with monkeys, as has already been stated, the beard frequently differs strikingly in colour from the hair of the head, and in such cases it is always of a lighter hue, being often pure white, sometimes yellow or reddish.

In regard to the general hairiness of the body, the women in all races are less hairy than the men; and in some few Quadrumana the under side of the body of the female is less hairy than that of the male. Lastly, male monkeys, like men, are bolder and fiercer than the females. They lead the troop, and when there is danger, come to the front. We thus see how close is the parallelism between the sexual differences of man and the Quadrumana. With some few species, however, as with certain baboons, the orang and the gorilla, there is a considerably greater difference between the sexes, as in the size of the canine teeth, in the development and colour of the hair, and especially in the colour of the naked parts of the skin, than in mankind.

All the secondary sexual characters of man are highly variable, even within the limits of the same race; and they differ much in the several races. These two rules hold good generally throughout the animal kingdom. In the excellent observations made on board the Novara, the male Australians were found to exceed the females by only 65 millim. in height, whilst with the Javans the average excess was 218 millim.; so that in this latter race the difference in height between the sexes is more than thrice as great as with the Australians. Numerous measurements were carefully made of the stature, the circumference of the neck and chest, the length of the back-bone and of the arms, in various