The Descent of Man

ather brighter than the females. The genus
Solenostoma, however, offers a curious exceptional
case (40. Dr. Gunther, since publishing
an account of this species in 'The Fishes of Zanzibar,'
by Col. Playfair, 1866, p. 137, has reexamined
the specimens, and has given me the
above information.), for the female is much
more vividly-coloured and spotted than the
male, and she alone has a marsupial sack and
hatches the eggs; so that the female of Solenostoma
differs from all the other Lophobranchii
in this latter respect, and from almost all other
fishes, in being more brightly-coloured than the
male. It is improbable that this remarkable double
inversion of character in the female should
be an accidental coincidence. As the males of
several fishes, which take exclusive charge of
the eggs and young, are more brightly coloured
than the females, and as here the female Solenostoma
takes the same charge and is brighter
than the male, it might be argued that the conspicuous
colours of that sex which is the more