Turning to Africa: the Kafirs buy their wives, and girls are severely beaten by their fathers if they will not accept a chosen husband; yet it is manifest from many facts given by the Rev. Mr. Shooter, that they have considerable power of choice. Thus very ugly, though rich men, have been known to fail in getting wives. The girls, before consenting to be betrothed, compel the men to shew themselves off, first in front and then behind, and “exhibit their paces.” They have been known to propose to a man, and they not rarely run away with a favoured lover. With the degraded bushwomen of S. Africa, “when a girl has grown up to womanhood without having been betrothed, which, however, does not often happen, her lover must gain her approbation, as well as that of the parents.”[465] Mr. Winwood Reade made inquiries for me with respect to the negroes of Western Africa, and he informs me that “the women, at least among the more intelligent Pagan tribes, have no difficulty in getting the husbands whom they may desire, although it is considered unwomanly to ask a man to marry them. They are quite capable of falling in love, and of forming tender, passionate, and faithful attachments.” We thus see that with savages the women are not in quite so abject a state in relation to marriage as has often been supposed. They can tempt the men whom they prefer, and can sometimes reject those whom they dislike, either before or after marriage. Preference on the part of the women, steadily acting in any one direction, would ultimately affect the character of the tribe; for the women would generally choose not merely the handsomer men, according to their standard of taste, but those who were at the same time best able to defend and support them. Such well-endowed pairs would commonly rear a larger number of offspring than the less well endowed. The same result would obviously follow in a still more marked manner if there was selection on both sides; that is if the more attractive, and at the same time more powerful men were to prefer, and were preferred by, the more attractive women. And these two forms of selection seem actually to have occurred, whether or not simultaneously, with mankind, especially during the earlier periods of our long history.