512 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



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 rudiment sometimes con- 

 sisting of a mere scale, as in Gallus. Hence it might be 

 argued that the females had aboriginally been furnished 

 with well-developed spurs, but that these had subsequently 

 been lost through disuse or natural selection. But if this 

 view be admitted it would have to be extended to innumer- 

 able other cases; and it implies that the female progenitors 

 of the existing spur-bearing species were once incumbered 

 with an injurious appendage. 



In some few genera and species, as in Galloperdix, 

 Acomus and the Javan peacock {Pavo muticus), the 

 females, as well as the males, possess well-developed leg- 

 spurs. Are we to infer from this fact that they construct 

 a different sort of nest from that made by their nearest 

 allies, and not liable to be injured by their spurs, so that 

 the spurs have not been removed ? Or are we to suppose 

 that the females of these several species especially require 

 spurs for their defense ? 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, 

 independently of natural selection. With the many 

 females in which spurs appear as rudiments we may con- 

 clude that some few of the successive variations, through 

 which they were developed in the males, occurred very 

 early in life and were consequently transferred to the 

 females. In the other and much rarer cases in which the 

 females possess fully developed spurs we may conclude 

 that all the successive variations were transferred to them; 

 and that they gradually acquired and inherited the habit 

 of not disturbing their nests. 



The vocal organs and the feathers variously modified for 

 producing sound, as well as the proper instincts for using 

 them, often differ in the two sexes, but are sometimes the 

 same in both. Can such differences be accounted for by the 

 males having acquired these organs and instincts, while the 

 females have been saved from inheriting them, on account 

 of the danger to which they would have been exposed by 

 attracting the attention of birds or beasts of prey? This 

 does not seem to me probable, when we think of the 

 multitude of birds which with impunity gladden the 



