Chap. XVII.] LAW OF BATTLE. 237 



other males, and have been transferred more or less com- 

 pletely to the female, in relation to the force of the equal 

 form of inheritance. 



The tusks of the elephant, in the different species or 

 races, differ according to sex, in nearly the same manner 

 as the horns of ruminants. In India and Malacca the 

 males alone are provided with well-developed tusks. The 

 elephant of Ceylon is considered by most naturalists as a 

 distinct race, but by some as a distinct species, and here 

 " not one in a hundred is found with tusks, the few that 

 possess them being exclusively males." '^ The African 

 elephant is undoubtedly distinct, and the female has 

 large, well-developed tusks, though not so large as those 

 of the male. These differences in the tusks of the scA'eral 

 races and species of elephants — the great variability of 

 the horns of deer, as notably in the wild-reindeer — the 

 occasional j^resence of horns in the female Antiloiye bezo- 

 artica — the presence of two tusks in some few male nar- 

 whals — the complete absence of tusks in some female 

 walruses — are all instances of the extreme variability of 

 secondary sexual characters, and of their extreme liability 

 to differ in closely-allied forms. 



Although tusks and horns appear in all cases to have 

 been primarily developed as sexual weapons, they often 

 serve for other purposes. The elephant uses his tusks in 

 attacking the tiger; according to Bruce, he scores the 

 trunks of trees until they can be easily thrown down, and 

 he likewise thus extracts the farinaceous cores of palms ; 

 in Africa he often uses one tusk, this being always the 

 same, to probe the ground and thus to ascertain whether 

 it will bear his weight. The common bull defends the 

 herd with his horns ; and the elk in Sweden has been 

 known, according to Lloyd, to strike a wolf dead with a 



i« Sir J. Emerson Tennent, 'Ceylon,' 1859, vol. ii. p. 274. For Ma- 

 lacca, ' Journal of Indian Archipelago,' vol. iv. p. 357. 



