510 THJ3 DESCENT OP MAN. 



their upper jaws." Male deer and antelopes, on the other hand, 

 possess horns, and they rarely have canine teeth; and these, when 

 present, are always of small size, so that it is doubtful whether 

 they are of any service in their battles. In Antilope montana 

 they exist only as rudiments in the young male, disappearing as 

 he grows old; and they are absent in the female at all ages; but 

 the females of certain other antelopes and of certain deer have 

 been known occasionally to exhibit rudiments of these teeth."^ 

 Stallions have small canine teeth, which are either quite absent or 

 rudimentary in the mare; but they do not appear to be used in 

 fighting, for stallions bite with their incisors, and do not open 

 their mouths wide Ifke camels and guanacoes. Whenever the 

 adult male possesses canines, now inefficient, whilst the female has 

 either none or mere rudiments, we may conclude that the early 

 male progenitor of the species was provided with efficient canines, 

 which have been partially transferred to the females. The re- 

 duction of these teeth in the males seems to have followed from 

 some change in their manner of fighting, often (but not in the 

 horse) caused by the development of new weapons. 



Tusks and horns are manifestly of high importance to their 

 possessors, for their development consumes much organized mat- 

 ter. A single tusk of the Asiatic elephant — one of the extinct 

 woolly species — and of the African elephant, have been known to 

 weigh respectively 150, 160, and 180 pounds; and even greater 

 weights have been given by some authors.^ With dfeer, in which 

 the horns are periodically renewed, the drain on the constitution 

 must be greater; the horns, for instance, of the moose weigh from 

 fifty to sixty pounds, and those of the extinct Irish elk from sixty 

 to seventy pounds — the skull of the latter weighing on an average 

 only five pounds and a quarter. Although the horns are not pe- 

 riodically renewed in sheep, yet their development, in the opin- 

 ion of many agriculturists, entails a sensible loss to the breeder. 

 Stags, moreover, in escaping from beasts of prey are loaded with 

 an additional weight for the race, and are greatly retarded in 

 passing through a woody country. The moose, for instance, with 

 horns extending five and a half feet from tip to tip, although so 



31 Ov7en, 'Anatomy of Vertebrates,' vol. ill. p. 349. 



32 See Ruppell (in 'Proc. Zoolog. Soc' Jan. 12, 1836, p. 3) on the canines 

 in deer and antelopes, with a note by Mr. Martin on a female Ameri- 

 can deer. See, also. Falconer ('Palaeont. Memoirs and Notes," vol. i. 

 1868, p. 576) on canines in an adult female deer. In old males of the 

 musk-deer the canines (PEUlas, 'Spic. Zoolog-.' fasc. xiii. 1779, p. 18) 

 sometimes grow to the length of three inches, whilst in old females 

 a, rudiment projects scarcely half an inch above the gums. 



=3 Emerson Tennent, 'Ceylon,' 1859, vol. ii. p. 275; Owen, 'British Fos- 

 sil Mammals,' 1846, p. 245. 



