Wild Beasts and Their Ways 133 
light-coloured markings haye left narrow intervals of darker fur that in time have 
come to be considered stripes, though the diversification has probably originated by 
the exaggeration of the white spots and stripes. These white or light-coloured 
markings again reappear in the juvenile stage of most pigs. They persist often 
to old age in the Tragulines, and, as I have already stated, they are markedly 
present in the deer and the musk deer. They may be the origin of the network of 
markings on the Giraffe; and lastly, they reappear (very slightly) in the more primitive 
types of oxen, and in one group of so-called antelopes—the Tragelaphs (eland, kudu, 
bushbuck). 
Early in the history of traguline development arose a tendency in the males to 
develop bosses of bone on the forehead with which no doubt they butted their rivals 
or foes. Nature is constantly repeating herself, and she has developed similar 
excrescences on the skulls of reptiles and in many other 
forms of mammalia than the creatures now under considera- 
tion. It has been, however, chiefly amongst the immense 
and varied group of hoofed animals—five-toed, even and 
uneven—that so-called horns or excrescent growths of bone on 
the skull have been developed for purposes of offence and 
defence, and the same end has been attained by a somewhat 
different process in the case of the rhinoceros, which on 
thickenings of the nasal bones has developed firstly bumps of 
stiff hairs, and gradually from these hairy bumps imitation 
horns of coalesced hair. By that curious and as yet un- 
defined parallelism so charac- teristic of nature’s action, horns 
—that is to say, bony projec- tions of the skull covered 
with hair or horn—have been developed in several different 
ways in the evolution of the pecorines. It is necessary to 
refer briefly to the different forms of these projections, in 
as much as they are the principal means of classifying 
the pecora or horned ruminants. These are in consequence 
divisible into ‘the following famihes or groups: (1) the 
Deer, (2) the Giraffes, (3) the Prongbuck, (4) the pecorids 
proper, generally known as the Bovide or ox-hke group. In 
the deer the horns seem to have begun (as in the munt- 
jaks of the present day) by the growth of a bony pro- 
jection from the frontal bones of the skull (the “ pedicel”), 
from which again springs a further growth of bone which, 
in all forms of deer but one Photo, W. P. Dando, Regents Pwk. or two, branches one or many 
times. This great extension ERE ee of bony growth from the 
pedicel is covered continuously Showing wines @a ihomas, with blood vessels, skin, and 
hai, until such time as its growth is complete. Then 
the blood ceases to circulate, the skin dries up, and is rubbed off, leaving the naked 
bone or antler. This, too, “dies” and falls off (once a year in most cases), leaving only 
the pedicel still projecting from the skull. In the case of the giraffes (so far as living 
forms are concerned) the horns are bony projections from the frontal and parietal bones 
of- the skull of separate growth, but ultimately fused with the skull bones. In the 
giraffe these bony projections are continuously covered with skin and hair lke any 
other part of the skull. In the Okapi it would seem that about three-quarters of an 
inch of sharp naked bone projects from the top of the hairy “horns.” In extinct forms 
of giraffe the bony core grew to extravagant lengths and developments, and quite possibly 
may have been covered with a horny rather than a hairy sheath. In the third family, 
