MAMMALS— LAW OF BATTLE. 50S 



two distinct species or races, often leads to the reappearance of 

 long-lost characters;'" so here, the disturbance in the constitution 

 of the individual, resulting from castration, produces the same 

 effect. 



The tusks of the elephant, in the different species or races, differ 

 according to sex, nearly as do the horns of ruminants. In India 

 and Malacca the males alone are provided with well-developed 

 tusks. The elephant of Ceylon is considered by most naturalists 

 as a distinct race, but by some as a distinct species, and here "not 

 "one in a hundred is found with tusks, the few that possess them 

 "being exclusively males.'"'" The African elephant is undoubtedly 

 distinct, and the female has large well-developed tusks, though 

 not so large as those of the male. 



These differences in the tusks of the several races and species 

 of elephants — the gr6at variability of the horns of deer, as notably 

 in the wild reindeer — the occasional presence of horns in the fe- 

 male Antilope bezoartica, and their frequent absence in the female 

 of Antilocapra americana — the presence of two tusks in some few 

 male narwhals — the complete absence of tusks in some female 

 walruses — are all instances of the extreme variability of secondary 

 sexual characters, and of their liability to differ in closely-allied 

 forms. 



Although tusks and horns appear in all cases to have been pri- 

 marily developed as sexual weapons, they often serve other pur- 

 poses. The elephant uses his tusks in attacking the tiger; ac- 

 cording to Bruce, he scores the trunks of trees until they can be 

 thrown down easily, and he likewise thus extracts the farinaceous 

 cores of palms; in Africa he often uses one tusk, always the same, 

 to probe the ground and thus ascertain whether it will bear his 

 weight. The common bull defends the herd with his horns; and the 

 elk in Sweden has been known, according to Lloyd, to strike a wolf 

 dead with a single blow of his great horns. Many similar facts 

 could be given. One of the most curious secondary uses to which 

 the horns of an animal may be occasionally put, is that observed 

 by Captain Hutton^' with the wild goat (Capra segagrus) of the 

 Himalayas, and as it is also said, with the ibex, namely, that when 

 the male accidentally falls from a height he bends inwards his 

 head, and by alighting on his massive horns breaks the shock. 

 The female cannot thus use her horns, which are smaller, but from 



1^ I have given various experiments and other evidence proving 

 that this is the case, in my 'Variation of Animals and Plants under 

 Pomestication,' vol. ii., 1868, pp. 39-47. 



^ Sir J. Emerson Tennent, 'Ceylon,' 1859, vol. ii. p. 274. For Malacca, 

 'Journal oJ! Indian Archipelago,' vol. iv. p. 357. 



^ 'Calcutta Journal of Nat. Hist.' vol. ii. 1843, p. 526. 



