MAMMALS-LAW OP BATTLE. 501 



Mr, Blyth has seen no less than three females thus furnished; and 

 there was no reason to suppose that they were old or diseased. 



In all the wild species of goats and sheep the horns are larger 

 in the male than in the female, and are sometimes quite ahsent in 

 the latter." In several domestic breeds of these two animals, the 

 males alone are furnished with horns; and in some breeds, for in- 

 stance, in the sheep of North Wales, though both sexes are 

 properly horned, the ewes are very liable to be hornless. I have 

 been informed by a trustworthy witness, who purposely inspected 

 a flock of these same sheep during the lambing season, that the 

 horns at birth are generally more fully developed in the male 

 than the female. Mr. J. Peel crossed his Lonk sheep, both sexes 

 of which always bear horns, with hornless Leicesters and hornless 

 Shropshire Downs; and the result was. that the male offspring had 

 their horns considerably reduced, whilst the females were wholly 

 destitute of them. These several facts indicate that, with sheep, 

 the horns are a much less firmly fixed character in the females 

 than in the males; and this leads us to look at the horns as 

 properly of masculine origin. 



With the adult musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus) the horns of the 

 male are larger than those of the female, and In the latter the 

 bases do not touch." In regard to ordinary cattle Mr. Blyth re- 

 marks: "In most of the wild bovine animals the horns are both 

 "longer and thicker in the bull than in the cow, and in the cow- 

 "banteng (Bos sondaicus) the horns are remarkably small, and 

 "inclined much backwards. In the domestic races of cattle, both 

 "of the humped and humpless types, the horns are short and thick 

 "in the bull, longer and more slender in the cow and ox; and in 

 "the Indian buffalo, they are shorter and thicker in the bull, 

 "longer and more slender in the cow. In the wild gaour (B. 

 "gaurus) the horns are mostly both longer and thicker in the 

 "bull than in the cow."'° Dr. Forsyth Major also informs me that 

 a fossil skull, believed to be that of the female Bos etruscus, has 

 been found in the Val d'Arno, which is wholly without horns. In 

 the Rhinoceros simus, as I may add, the horns of the female are 

 generally longer but less powerful than in the male; and in some 

 other species of rhinoceros they are said to be shorter in the fe- 

 male."" From these various facts we may infer as probable that 

 horns of all kinds, even when they are equally developed in the 

 two sexes, were primarily acquired by the male in order to con- 



"^ Gray, 'Catalogue Mamm. Brit. Mus." part iii. 1852, p. 160. 

 " Richardson, 'Fauna Bor. Americana,' p. 278. 

 ^ 'Land and Water,' 1867, p. 346. 



i« Sir Andrew Smith, 'Zoology of S. Africa,' pi. xix. Owen, 'Anatomy 

 of Vertebrates,' vol. 111. p. 624. 



33 



