CHAPTER X. 



HABITS AND HAIR OF UNGULATES. 



Oxen. 



The even-toed section of hoofed animals is a much larger group 

 than the odd-toed, and the difference may be illustrated by looking 

 at the great work on Natural History by Lydekker. There are 

 273 pages given up to this group and only 112 to the odd-toed, 

 and when we remember that there are contained in it the hippo- 

 potamus, all the pigs, oxen, sheep, goats, antelopes, camels, llamas, 

 giraffes and deer, we can see that Lydekker was well justified in 

 the great amount of space devoted to them. But we all have our 

 different forms of penchant, and I propose to say very much less 

 about this section than about the other represented by the domestic 

 horse. It is well to claim the shelter of a great name in such an 

 apportionment of interest, and Professor Poulton has given a 

 clear precedent in his great book called Essays on Evolution. It 

 contains 393 pages and even though the subject of the work is 

 Evolution, he has given up 330 pages approximately, or five-sixths, 

 of his space to insects. This can be gathered from a rough analysis 

 of his various essays, and no one need blame a great biologist for 

 having a penchant for the subject he knows best, or a small one for 

 writing of that he knows a little. 



The reason that the even-toed ungulates require less study 

 from the present point of view is that they are so much more 

 marked by the normal or primitive slope of hair than the previous 

 group of Chapter IX. They demonstrate very widely and 

 thoroughly the empire of the primitive or " barbarian " forces and 

 so far are valuable witnesses of the negative kind. No case can 

 well be proved to satisfaction by a large series of negatives, and this 

 was the hopeless task Weismann set out to prove, when he staked 

 his all on the non -inheritance of acquired characters — and failed. 

 But negative evidence is of great value in supporting an hypothesis 

 when it is found to be the precise complement to extensive positive 

 evidence brought in favour of that hypothesis. That is the case 

 in regard to the patterns of hair found on oxen, sheep, antelopes, 

 gazelles and deer, to say nothing of hippopotami, pigs and llamas. 

 There are some of these patterns described in the previous group 



