158 



drawn from circumstances he has related, but which, nevertheless, 

 I mušt not allovv to pass unnoticed as they bear upon the immediate 

 object of my paper. The author statės, that " a red hind in the 

 forest of the Duke of Gordon was observed to carry a single horn on 

 one side of her head, — such a hom as the malė red deer bears in bis 

 third year." She was shot. " And on iuternal examuiation by tvvo 

 competent persons, she was found to have a scirrhous ovary on the 

 opposite side to that on which she bore the horn." Here we have 

 a lusus iiaturcE, and an organie disease, coexisting in the šame ani- 

 mal ; and there can be no physiological reason why such might not 

 be the case, and certainly there can be none that they should. The 

 author proceeds : — "A red hind, in the park at Holkham, was ob- 

 served to carry one horn of some length 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, and the other side probably diseased." 



I think, however, it would be more within the range of pro- 

 babiUty, and more natūrai, to suppose, as this hind had borne a 

 calf {malgre the horn), that both her ovaries were sound, since the 

 healthy exercise of the sexual functions, and also the fecundating 

 powers of the ovaries were perfectly undisturbed. The deduction, 

 that because a diseased ovary was once found to exist in a hind bear- 

 ing a horn, that therefore all hinds bearing a horn mušt necessarily 

 have a diseased ovary, caunot ręst on the slightest validity ; and all 

 general conclusions, drawn from individual instances, mušt ever be 

 the causes of error ; and they are but too frequently errors in them- 

 selves. There are freaks of nature (lusus naturce) which cannot 

 physiologically be accounted for. " Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere 

 cansas." Hinds may be furnished with a horn, and entire stags be 

 destitute of antlers, &c.* Colonel M'Doual, late of the 2nd Life 

 Guards, related to me, that while deer-stalking on his grounds, and 

 being concealed from a herd that hadgently approached him, — with 

 hinds only, as he believed, — within range of his rifle, his keeper urged 

 him to shoot one among them vvhich was larger than the ręst. He 

 would not, however, do so, and when too late, he was assured that 

 the animal had been long known to the keepers as a polled stag ; of 

 which he too was presently satisfied, by observing him advance 

 towards some other stags, attack them, and drive them to some 

 distance, and then return to herd again with the hinds. The author 

 relates also a similar experiment, excepting the difference of age, to 

 that given in a former part of this paper, of the removal of a tęstis 

 from each of two bucks, Cervus Dama (four years old), the one from 

 the left, the other from the right side ; and observes : " Neither 



* The human hands are sometimes bestrewed with vvarts ; the human frame 

 totally denuded of hair, pubescent and other ; and the hair becomes more or less 

 suddenly perfectly white ; but no diminution of vronted health, moral, physical, 

 or sesual, precedes, accompanies or follows these States ; although often during 

 future esistence, not a vestige of the pilous covering recurs, nor is the colour of 

 the hair restored. Two instances of such albinism have occurred in our gardens 

 in Barbary Mice {Mua Barbarus, Linn.), where one may still be seen. 



