Chap. XV.] DEVELOPMENT OF SPURS. 155 



it appeared to me probable that with the females of the 

 wild Gallinacese the development of spurs had been checked 

 through natural selection, from the injury thus caused to 

 their nests. This seemed all the more probable as the 

 wing-spurs, which could not be injurious during nidification, 

 are often as well developed in the female as in the male ; 

 though in not a few cases they are rather larger in the 

 male. "When the male is furnished with leg-spurs the 

 female almost always exhibits rudiments of them — the 

 rudiments sometimes consisting of a mere scale, as with the 

 species of Gallus. Hence it might be argued that the fe- 

 males had aboriginally been furnished with well-developed 

 spurs, but that these had subsequently been lost either 

 through disuse or natural selection. But if this view be 

 admitted, it would have to be extended to innumerable 

 other cases ; and it implies that the female progenitors of 

 the existing spur-bearing species were once encumbered 

 with an injurious appendage. 



In some few genera and species, as in Galloperdix, 

 Acomus, and the Javan peacock (jPavo muticus), the fe- 

 males as well as the males possess well-developed spurs. 

 Are we to infer from this fact that they construct a differ- 

 ent sort of nest, not liable to be injured by their spurs, 

 from that made by their nearest allies, so that there has 

 been no need for the removal of their spurs ? Or are we 

 to suppose that these females especially require spurs for 

 their defence ? It is a more probable conclusion that both 

 the presence and absence of spurs in the females result from 

 different laws of inheritance having prevailed, indepen- 

 dently of natural selection. With the many females in 

 which spurs appear as rudiments, we may conclude that some 

 few of the successive variations, through which they were 

 developed in the males, occurred very early in life, and 

 were as a consequence transferred to the females. In the 

 other and much rarer cases, in which the females possess 



