2C8 SEXUAL SELECTION: MAMMALS. Part IL 



doubtful whether they are of any service in their 

 battles. With Antilojje montana they exist only as 

 rudiments in the young male, disappearing as he 

 grows okl ; and they are absent in the female at 

 all ages ; but the females of certain other antelopes 

 and deer have been known occasionally to exhibit 

 rudiments of these teeth.^^ StalHons have small canine 

 teeth, which are either quite absent or rudimentary 

 in the mare ; but tbey do not appear to be used in 

 fighting, for stallions bite with their incisors, and do 

 not open their mouths widely like camels and guana- 

 coes. Whenever the adult male possesses canines now 

 in an inefficient state, whilst the female has either none 

 or mere rudiments, we may conclude that the early 

 male progenitor of the species was provided with effi- 

 cient canines, which had been partially transferred to 

 the females. The reduction of these teeth in the males 

 seems to have followed from some change in their 

 manner of fighting, often caused (but not in the case 

 of the horse) by the development of new weapons. 



Tusks and horns are manifestly of high importance to 

 their possessors, for their development consumes much 

 organised matter. A single tusk of the Asiatic ele- 

 phant, — one of the extinct woolly species, — and of the 

 African elephant, have been known to weigh respectively 

 ir)0, 160, and 180 pounds ; and even greater weights 

 have been assigned by some authors."^ With deer, in 



28 See Kiippell (in 'Proc. Zoolog. Soc' Jan. 12, 1836, p. 3) on the 

 canines in deer and antelopes, with a note by Mr. Martin on a female 

 American deer. See also Falconer (' Palseont. Memoirs and Notes,' 

 vol. i. 1868, p. 576) on canines in an adult female deer. In old males 

 of the musk-deer the canines (Pallas, ' Spic. Zoolog.' fasc. xiii. 1779, p. 

 18) sometimes grow to the leugth of three inches, whilst in old females 

 a rudiment projects scarcely half an inch above the gums. 



-9 Emerson Tennent, 'Ceylon,' 1859, vol. ii. p. 275; Owen, 'British 

 Fossil Mammals,' 1846, p. 245. 



