IN MODIFYING EXTEENAL CHAEACTEB. 79 



watched, and having cast this horn at the usual period, it was 

 secured and preserved. I have seen it very recently. It is 

 straight and upright, measuring thirteen inches from the burr to 

 the end ; about as thick as a man's fore-finger at its base above 

 the burr, but tapers gradually; brown in colour at the bottom, 

 whiter above, hard, smooth and polished towards the point, which 

 is sharp. To add to the interest in this case, this hind dropped a 

 calf; we may therefore suppose, the cornua and ovaries being 

 double, that one side was healthy and perfect, the other side 

 probably diseased. 



About six years since, a red hind in the forest of the Lords of 

 Lovatt was observed to bear a horn, and of this instance I hope 

 to receive further particulars. 



The writer in the " Sportsman's Cabinet" before referred to, 

 mentions, at p. 61, that a deer " being deprived of only one tes- 

 ticle, the horn will never regenerate on that side ; but continue 

 to grow and be annually shed on the other, where the remaining 

 testicle has not been taken away." This statement of a lateral 

 influence, and the case of the Gordon Forest hind, induced an 

 experiment which I will endeavour to describe. In the autumn 

 of the year 1833, having the advantage of being on the Council of 

 the Zoological Society with Prof. Owen, I suggested to him an 

 experiment having reference to this sexual lateral influence. Mr. 

 Owen very kindly immediately joined me in it. We procured 

 two fallow-bucks, equal in size, and both in their fourth year 

 one, a dark-coloured buck of the breed considered to have been 

 brought originally from the North ; the other a buff-coloured one 

 from the South, and both carrying horns of equal size, and of the 

 fourth year. 



From one of these fallow-bucks, while held on the ground, Mr. 

 Owen removed the testis of the right side, and from the other 

 buck, the testis on the left side. Neither of these bucks cast 

 either horn, nor was any lateral influence observable. They shed 

 their horns as usual in the following spring, the new horns coming 

 in due course ; but in the autumn, when these horns had ceased 

 to grow and become hard, all four horns were those of the third 

 year, and not those of the fifth year : no lateral influence was ob- 

 servable, but it was plainly shown that the diminished sexual power, 

 consequent upon the operation, had produced a corresponding 

 diminution in the size of the horns in both cases. Towards the 

 end of 1834, the Society's farm at Kingston, where the bucks had 

 been kept, was given up, and further observation prevented. 



