Notes, iii. 2. 19 1 



to those who held that the unicorn was a fabulous animal, that there are no less 

 than five kinds ; among which he reckons the Oryx and the Indian ass. Cf. Vulgar 

 Errors, iii. 23. ' 



13. Cf. ii. 9, I^fote 9. 



14. The fable of Momus, the critic God, is alluded to by Lucian {Nigrinus, 32), and 

 told in full by Babius (.$"?> C. Lewes' s ed. 59). Their account of the criticism on the 

 bull's structure is not quite the same as Aristotle's. Momus objects that the horns are ia 

 placed as to be in the way of the animal's sight when it has its head down to attack its 

 foe. 



15. A. knew nothing of the giraffe, except perhaps by name, if the Hippardium, as 

 some think, be that animaL So that he is correct in saying that deer alone have solid 

 horns ; and that they alone^ cast them. The rest of the horned ruminants are all 

 sheath-homed— cavicomia. That is to say, their horns consist each of a conical process of 

 bone, which is covered by a sheath of horny matter, and is not cast periodically like the 

 solid horn of the stag, excepting by the Prong-homed Antelope of North America. 



16. Cf. Introduction, p. iv. 



17. The gazelle, though small, is by no means the smallest of the homed ruminants ; 

 sundry other species of antelope, such as the guevi and the kleenebock, being much 

 more diminutive. Indeed one variety of guevi is said by Adanson to be not much 

 larger than a good-sized Norway rat. 



18. Cf. Introd. p. vii. 



19. "The inverse relationship between the development of teeth and homs, exemplified 

 by the total absence of canines in the ruminants with persistent frontal weapons, by 

 their first appearance in the periodically hornless deer, and by their larger size in the 

 absolutely hornless musks, is further illustrated by the presence not only of canines but 

 of a pair of laniariform incisors in the upper jaw of Camelidse " {Owen, Vert. iii. 348), 

 and to this statement may be added the recently acquired fact that the water-deer of 

 China has no antlers, like other true deer, but has two long projecting canine teeth to 

 serve in their place for defence. It is however very doubtful whether these facts are 

 to be explained as in the text by the law of organic equivalents (ii. 9, Note 9). 

 Still the amount of Organic matter consumed in the development of homs is so great, 

 that it is by no means impossible that their presence may necessitate a greater economy 

 in the rest of the body ; and this economy will be practised in those parts which are 

 the least necessary, such as the canine teeth which are no longer required as weapons 

 of strife. "Tusks and horns," says Darwin (Desc. of Man, ii. 258), " are manifestly of 

 high importance to their possessors, for their development consumes much organised 

 matter. A single tusk of the Asiatic elephant, one of the extinct woolly species, and 

 of an African elephant, have been known to weigh 150, 160, and 180 pounds, and even 

 greater weights have been assigned by some authors. With deer in which the homs are 

 periodically renewed, the drain on the constitution must be greater : the homs for 

 instance of the moose weigh from 50 to 60 pounds, and those of the extinct Irish elk 

 from 60 to 70 pounds, the skull of the latter weighing on an average only ^\ pounds. 

 With sheep, although the horns are not periodically renewed, yet their development, in 

 the opinion of many agriculturists, entails a sensible loss to the breeder." That such 

 may be the case we may readily suppose when we consider that homs weighing 72 lbs. 

 have been developed in deer in ten weeks (cf. Huxley, Verteb. 385). 



20. Cf. Note 5. 



21. Thus in the Babimssa pig the tipper tusks "more nearly resemble horns than 

 teeth." 



