may conclude that the possession of fairly well-developed horns by the
female reindeer, is due to the males having first acquired them as
weapons for fighting with other males; and secondarily to their
development from some unknown cause at an unusually early age in the
males, and their consequent transference to both sexes.
Turning to the sheath-horned ruminants: with antelopes a graduated
series can be formed, beginning with species, the females of which are
completely destitute of horns passing on to those which have horns so
small as to be almost rudimentary (as with the Antilocapra americana,
in which species they are present in only one out of four or five
females (11. I am indebted to Dr. Canfield for this information; see
also his paper in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 1866, p.
105.)) to those which have fairly developed horns, but manifestly
smaller and thinner than in the male and sometimes of a different shape
(12. For instance the horns of the female Ant. euchore resemble those
of a distinct species, viz. the Ant. dorcas var. Corine, see Desmarest,
Mammalogie, p. 455.), and ending with those in which both sexes have
horns of equal size. As with the reindeer, so with antelopes, there
exists, as previously shewn, a relation between the period of the
development of the horns and their transmission to one or both sexes;
it is therefore probable that their presence or absence in the females
of some species, and their more or less perfect condition in the
females of other species, depends, not on their being of any special
use, but simply on inheritance. It accords with this view that even in
the same restricted genus both sexes of some species, and the males
alone of others, are thus provided. It is also a remarkable fact that,
although the females of Antilope bezoartica are normally destitute of
horns, Mr. Blyth has seen no less than three females thus furnished;
and there was no reason to suppose that they were old or diseased.
In all the wild species of goats and sheep the horns are larger in the
male than in the female, and are sometimes quite absent in the latter.
(13. Gray, Catalogue of Mammalia, the British Museum, part iii. 1852,
p. 160.) In several domestic breeds of these two animals, the males
alone are furnished with horns; and in some breeds, for instance, in
the sheep of North Wales, though both sexes are properly horned, the
ewes are very liable to be hornless. I have been informed by a
trustworthy witness, who purposely inspected a flock of these same
sheep during the lambing season, that the horns at birth are generally
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