any female. It is more probable that the ornaments common to both sexes were acquired by one sex, generally the male, and then transmitted to the offspring of both sexes."[1]
I have given my reasons for doubting whether this last hypothesis really is more probable than the other one of a double process of sexual selection—at any rate as far as birds are concerned: and I suggest that, in their case, the whole question of the relations of the sexes to one another should be reconsidered after much more careful observation, especially in regard to those species where the male and female are alike, or where they differ markedly, and are both handsome. As to the possibility of the taste for the beautiful differing in the two sexes of any bird or animal, I cannot see why this should not sometimes be the case. One sex is attracted only by the beauty of the opposite one, so that if, owing to slight constitutional differences between them, the variations which occurred in the one were somewhat different to those which occurred in the other (which hardly seems very unlikely), these might be selected and "added up"—to use Darwin's expression—along two gradually diverging lines, and this would lead, insensibly and necessarily, to divergence of taste as between the male and the female. The law is for the one sex to admire what it gets in the other. Therefore, supposing individual differences in both, and a choice in regard to them on the opposite side, taste, in each case, must be
- ↑ Descent of Man, pp. 225-226.
