n. Almost all the Malay races, as
well as the Indians of South America, make great palm-leaf hats, four
feet or more across, which they use during their canoe voyages to
protect their bodies from heavy showers of rain; and they use smaller
hats of the same kind when travelling by land.

We find, then, that so far from there being any reason to believe that a
hairy covering to the back could have been hurtful or even useless to
pre-historic man, the habits of modern savages indicate exactly the
opposite view, as they evidently feel the want of it, and are obliged to
provide substitutes of various kinds. The perfectly erect posture of
man, may be supposed to have something to do with the disappearance of
the hair from his body, while it remains on his head; but when walking,
exposed to rain and wind, a man naturally stoops forwards, and thus
exposes his back; and the undoubted fact, that most savages feel the
effects of cold and wet most severely in that part of the body,
sufficiently demonstrates that the hair could not have ceased to grow
there merely because it was useless, even if it were likely that a
character so long persistent in the entire order of mammalia, could have
so completely disappeared, under the influence of so weak a selective
power as a diminished usefulness.

_Man's Naked Skin could not have been produced by Natural Selection._

It seems to me, then, to be absolutely certain, that "Natural Selection"
could not have produced man's hairless body by the accumulation of
variations from a hairy ancestor. The evidence all goes to show that
such variations could not have been useful, but must, on the contrary,
have been to some extent hurtful. If even, owing to an unknown
correlation with other hurtful qualities, it had been abolished in the
ancestral tropical man, we cannot conceive that, as man spread into
colder climates, it should not have returned under the powerful
influence of reversion to such a long persistent ancestral type. But the
very foundation of such a supposition as this is untenable; for we
cannot suppose that a character which, like hairiness, exists throughout
the whole of the mammalia, can have become, in one form only, so
constantly correlated with an injurious character, as to lead to its
permanent suppression--a suppression so complete and effectual that it
never, or scarcely ever, reappears in mongrels of the most widely
different races of man.

Two characters could hardly be