SEX-CHARACTERS ILLUSTRATED 61 



his mate. The mandrill has, again, enormous 

 canines, and the bony prominences of the 

 upper jaw which rise on each side of the 

 elongated snout, are covered with blue naked 

 skin, with ridges and furrows ; the canines, 

 the prominences, the furrows and the colour- 

 ing are much less marked in the females. The 

 male elephant seals of Kerguelen's Land have 

 an inflatable nasal proboscis, the free part 

 of which projects for six inches; and the 

 bladder - nosed seal of the North Atlantic 

 ice-fields has the base of the nose dilated on 

 the dorsal side to form a bladder which can 

 be blown up till it is as big as the head. The 

 male narwhal has its canine tooth on one 

 side produced into a spiral tusk which may 

 be ten feet long ; its fellow on the other side 

 normally remains about ten inches long; in 

 the female both are rudimentary. Stags 

 have their antlers, but in the reindeer these 

 occur in both sexes. Those of the female are 

 smaller and less branched, and she retains 

 them till she bears her young in April or 

 May, whereas the male loses his, as usual, 

 immediately after the breeding season (at the 

 end of November). Darwin noted that the 

 antlers appear in both sexes very early, in 

 fact, in four or five weeks after birth, whereas 

 it is not usual for stags to have antlers till 

 their second summer. According to some 

 authorities, when Cervidae began to have 

 antlers, they were specific characters shared 

 by both sexes ; they have become secondarily 

 restricted to the males (except in reindeer). 

 But according to others, the antlers were, 

 to begin with, restricted to the males, and 



