William T. Brigham
The love of personal decoration appears very early in the history of the human race. When the fierce struggle for existence and the pursuit of food and shelter allowed time for the consideration of family, the keen hunters must have learned many a lesson from the beasts of the field and forest,—not less from the birds of the air, of the processes of Nature which Mr. Darwin has called sexual selection. That any savage ever reasons out these processes cannot be believed, but the sharp eye trained in daily hunts could not be blind to the patent fact that so many birds have plumage evidently intended for attractive decoration, and that it answers this purpose. Savage man at first put on the adornments in which he saw the male of so many birds and beasts was resplendent, and not until many ages after was the woman allowed to appropriate to her own use what in early tribal life was the exclusive property of the male.
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