[AMMALS 89 



sexual activity, and are therefore associated in heredity with 

 the same activity. When the testes are removed, the heredi- 

 tary tendency in this direction ceases to manifest itself. 



The case of the Moose Deer shows in a most interesting 

 manner that it is more or less permanent possession of the 

 female, and the habits associated with this, which give rise 

 to sexual dimorphism, and that polygamy, or the possession 

 of several females, is by no means necessary. The Moose, 

 Alces pcdmata, differs from all other species of the Cervidae 

 in being monogamous, and yet the male has very large antlers. 

 According to J. D. Caton, " when he finds himself accepted 

 by an agreeable partner, they retire to a deep secluded 

 thicket in low marshy ground, where they spend their 

 honeymoon of three or four weeks. If, however, his quiet 

 privacy is disturbed by a rival, his fierceness and rage are at 

 once kindled into a fury, and he goes to meet the foe." The 

 moose fights like other stags, but fights for the possession of 

 one mate, not of several. 



A statement concerning a modification in the antlers of 

 deer is quoted by Darwin, which, if true, would be very 

 strong evidence in favour of spontaneous variation and selec- 

 tion, and difficult to reconcile with the views maintained by 

 me. A writer in the American Naturalist, who had hunted 

 Cervus mrginianus in the Adirondack Hills for twenty-one 

 years, stated that he had frequently killed bucks or stags 

 in which the antler consisted of a single unbranched spike 

 projecting forward from the brow and terminating in a very 

 sharp point. The spike-horn was alleged to be superior to the 

 normal antler, as a weapon, and in consequence the spike- 

 horn bucks were said to be gaining upon the common bucks 

 in numbers, so that in time all the stags would be spike - 

 horned. This is a curious instance of the influence of an 

 accepted doctrine on an imaginative and superficial observer. 

 J. D. Caton, who made a special study of the natural history 



