Notes, iii. i. . 187 



being here the offensive, and the lower the defensive, weapons. Cf. Darwin, D. of Man, 

 ii. ch. 17. . 



2. That is, " broad below and sharp above " {^H. A. ii. 3, i). 



3. "Tusks and horns never co-exist in the same animal ; nor does any animal that is 

 saw-toothed ever have either of these parts" {H. A. ii. I, 52). Cf. iii. 2, Notes 9 and 19. 



4. That the males in any armed species are almost invariably furnished with more 

 formidable weapons than the females is a conspicuous fact, as also is their more pugna- 

 cious temperament. The temperament is according to A.'s views the antecedent of the 

 weapons. But it is more probable that both weapons and temperament are attributable 

 to one common cause ; and what that cause is Darwin has shown in his work on sexual 

 selection. The males contend with each other for the females, and such males as chance 

 variation has endowed with a slightly stronger weapon or slightly stouter heart will as 

 a rule prevail in the straggle ; and, obtaining preferential possession of the females, 

 will leave offspring in greater numbers than their less favoured competitors. Of this 

 offspring some will inherit the physical and moral advantages of their sires. Of these 

 again the best-armed and the most valiant will be most successful in 'propagating their 

 kind ; and so on, generation after generation, the comparatively weakly and cowardly 

 being eliminated at each stage of improvement 



5. The only grounds for saying that the organs of vegetative life are smaller pro- 

 portionately in females than in males are, so far as I am aware, the smaller size of the 

 gills in female fishes {Yarrell, Fishes, i. xxi), and of the respiratory organs in the females 

 of the higher vertebrates , and the alleged smaller proportions of the female heart [M. 

 Edwards, Lefons, iii, 483). Berhaps however A. merely means that all the organs of 

 females are smaller than the corresponding parts in males. If so, he must be speaking 

 only of Mammals. For while he recognises the greater size of the males in this group, 

 he also recognizes the contrary in other groups {H. A. iv. 11, 9 ; v. 5, 3 ; Z>. 6^. i. 16, 2). 



6. It will be noticed how carefully and accurately A. expresses himself in this passage. 

 As he was of course ignorant of the reindeer, his statement that the female deer are 

 without horns is quite correct. As to sheep and cattle he merely says that the horns 

 differ in the two sexes, being stronger in the male {H. A. iv. II, 15). This is also 

 correct. For "in all the wild species of sheep and goats the horns are larger in the 

 male than in the female, and are sometimes quite absent in the latter, as is also the 

 case in several domestic breeds. In most wild bovine animals the buU has longer and 

 thicker horns than the cow. While in the domestic races of cattle, the horns of the 

 bull though thicker than those of the cow are shorter " [Dai-imn, Des. of Man. ii. 245). 

 So also he is correct' in simply saying that female birds are often without spurs when 

 the males have them. For in some species of Gallinacese the hens are without any 

 vestige of spurs ; in most they possess them in a rudimentary condition ; while in a few 

 exceptional cases they have them fully formed. 



Elsewhere {H. A. ix. 49, 2) it is remarked that in some pugnacious hens small spurs 

 rise up on the legs ; and mention is made {H. A. iv. 2, 9) of a crustacean in which the 

 male has much larger spur-like appendages than the female. 



7. The Scarus is doubtless the parrot-fish {Scarus Cretensis) of the Archipelago. The 

 beak-like jaws of these fishes have a dense covering of four-sided prismatic denticles. 

 With this strong apparatus they scoop off the calcareous lithophytes from the bottom 

 of the sea, on which they browse just as the ruminants crop the herbage of the fields. 

 See Owen's Vert. i. 378, for a representation of this dentition. The parrot-fish is by no 

 means the only exception to the general statement that all fishes have serrated dentition. 

 In the wolf-fish .for instance most of the teeth are powerful crushers, as in many other 



