Dear Sir

Like many hundreds of other readers I am engaged in the delicious study of your “Descent of Man”—

Two points have occurred to me whilst reading the first volume

Apropos to the fact of the much larger percentage of female births in illegitimacy as compared with births in wedlock—¹ Can this in great part arise from the numerous attempts to procure abortion & so to hide shame, coupled with the greater liability to death of the male child as compared with the female child— I recollect many years ago being struck by the remark of an old woman when she was asked whether so & so’s bastard was a boy or a girl— “A girl of course if it had been a boy it would have been killed long since, if what has been said about her attempts to hide her mischance is true”— It is possible this may be a factor overlooked in the statistics of births

The other point is with regard to the comparative hairlessness of the human body—² I have for many years been so struck with the almost entire absence of hair just where the main pressure & friction of clothes would act—that I have got a sort of fixed idea that the wearing of clothes has for ages been militating against the growth of hair until the bulbs have become aborted— Tierra del Fuego seems to be a most exceptional instance of the entire absence of clothing— My little terrier dog although it has a close crop of short hair is so fond of warmth that I am sure she would make clothes for herself were her mind equal to the task so I see no difficulty in supposing that bipeds made coverings for themselves whilst still in a state of hairyness & thus tended to stop the growth of hair & to make it less necessary by one & the same act

I am D^r Sir | Yours very truly | Edwin Brown

PS I have put the clothes hypothesis to Wallace³ but he won’t see it of course