Chap. XVII. Mammals — Law of Battle. 505 



view that even in the same restricted genus both sexes of some 

 species, and the males alone of others, are thus provided. It is 

 rIso 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 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 

 more fully developed in the male than the female. Mr. J. Peel 

 crossed his Lonk sheep, both sexes of which always bear horns, 

 with hornless Leicesters and hornless Shropshire Downs; and 

 the result was that the male offspring had their horns con- 

 siderably reduced, whilst the females were wholly destitute of 

 them. These several facts indicate that, with sheep, the horns 

 are a much less firmly fixed character in the females than in 

 the males ; and this leads us to look at the horns as properly 

 of masculine origin. 



With the adult musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus) the horns of the 

 male are larger than those of the female, and in the latter the 

 bases do not touch. 14 In regard to ordinary cattle Mr. Blyth 

 remarks : " In most of the wild bovine animals the horns are 

 " both longer and thicker in the bull than in the cow, and in 

 " the cow-banteng (Bos sondaicus) the horns are remarkably 

 " small, and inclined much backwards. In the domestic races 

 " of cattle, both of the humped and hump] ess types, the horns 

 " are short and thick in the bull, longer and more slender in the 

 tl cow and ox ; and in the Indian buffalo, they are shorter and 

 " thicker in the bull, longer and more slender in the cow. In 

 " the wild gaour (B. gaurus) the horns are mostly both longer 

 H and thicker in the bull than in the cow." 15 Dr. Forsyth Major 

 also informs me that a fossil skull, believed to be that of the 

 female Bos etruscus, has been found in the Val d'Arno, which is 

 wholly without horns. In the Rhinoceros sirnus, as I may add, 

 the horns of the female are generally longer but less powerful 

 than in the male ; and in some other species of rhinoceros they 



13 Gray, • Catalogue Mamm, Brit, ricana,' p. 278. 

 Mus.' part iii. 1852, p. 160. " ' Land and Water,' 1857, p 



u Richardson, ' Fauna Bor. Ame- 346. 



