MAMMALS 65 



Carnivora. Darwin remarks that male animals which are 

 provided with efficient cutting or tearing teeth for the 

 ordinary purposes of life are seldom furnished with weapons 

 specially adapted for fighting with their rivals. Thus the 

 male carnivora in fighting together use the teeth which they 

 generally use for killing their prey. The most conspicuous 

 male character in the carnivora is the mane of the Lion. 

 Darwin states that he is the only polygamist among the 

 terrestrial carnivora, and he alone presents well-marked 

 sexual characters. But the importance of his polygamy 

 seems to lie in his greater pugnacity, for, according to Sir 

 Andrew Smith, lions engage in terrible battles. The mane is 

 erected by the angry lion, and the same arguments apply to 

 this character as to the manes of baboons. The aquatic 

 carnivora or seals exhibit some interesting cases of special 

 characters confined to the males, and in these the connection 

 between the special modifications and special stimulation is 

 very obvious. Among the true Phocidse, the family of the 

 common seals, there are two species known as the Sea- 

 Elephant, also called the Elephant Seal, and the Bladder-nosed 

 Seal. In both of these, the snout of the male is enlarged 

 and can be erected or inflated. There is no such peculiarity 

 about the nose of the female. 



The Elephant Seal is an Antarctic species, and formerly was 

 abundant at many places where it is now seldom or never 

 seen. At present it is for the most part restricted to a few 

 remote islands, such as Kerguelen's Land. In the eighteenth 

 century, Anson, in the course of his voyage round the world 

 (1740-44), found it abundant on the shores of Juan Fernandez. 

 He described the males as having a large snout or trunk 

 hanging down five or six inches below the end of the upper 

 jaw. The description, with figures of the male and female, are 

 contained in the narrative of the voyage by Eichard Walter, 

 and the copy of this figure of the male printed in Moseley's 



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