The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

RECORD: Darwin, C. R. [1858]. Ch 6 Sexual selection. CUL-DAR85.B25r. Edited by John van Wyhe (Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/)

REVISION HISTORY: Transcribed by Christine Chua and edited by John van Wyhe 3.2022. RN1

NOTE: See record in the Darwin Online manuscript catalogue, enter its Identifier here. Reproduced with permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library and William Huxley Darwin. The volumes CUL-DAR80-86 contain material for Darwin's book Descent of man (1871).

CUL-DAR85.B25r is reproduced and discussed in Eveleen Richards, Darwin and the making of sexual selection. 2017, pp. 352-353. According to Richards, this is one of two 'lost' leaves from Darwin's 'big book'. As she writes in her prologue: "Two rediscovered pages of his "big species" book (thought lost) show that Darwin had put female choice in theoretical place by, at the latest, mid-1858." In Natural selection (F1583), Darwin had planned to discuss sexual selection in Chapter VI.

[B25r]

(719[?]

Ch 6 Sexual Selection

to its Kind in defending the f [female] herd from wolves & other beasts of prey, yet

I think its main [insertion:] it will be admitted that their

purpose is for battling with other bulls: probably this is the almost exclusive use of the horns of the

(a) text

deer which in [same manner] as the Wapiti weighing the [illeg] can hardly fail to be a great encumbrance to it; so with the spurs of the Cock; so probably with the mane of the lion as a means of defence against no other be[asts] of prey, like the spiked collar of the Thibetan shepherd dogs against the panther, but have certainly against no other beasts of prey but against rival lions. Hence the strongest individual Bull, - the strongest deer with the most [words excised] horns - the cock with the sharpest spurs [words excised] & having the strongest

Citation: John van Wyhe, ed. 2002-. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. (http://darwin-online.org.uk/)