648 THE DESCENT OF MAN 



of mares; "and it is certain that these stallions would never 

 have approached each other without fighting. Both had 

 tried singly to fight the English horse and drive away his 

 mares, but had failed. One day they came in together and 

 attacked him. This was , seen by the capitan who had 

 charge of the horses, and who, on riding to the spot, found 

 one of the two stallions eagaged with the English horse, 

 while the other was driving away the mares, and had al- 

 ready separated four from the rest. The capitan settled 

 the matter by driving the whole party into the corral, 

 for the wild stallions would not leave the mares." 



Male animals which are provided with efficient cutting 

 or tearing teeth for the ordinary purposes of life, such as 

 the carnivora, insectivora, and rodents, are seldom far- 

 nished with weapons especially adapted for fighting with 

 their rivals. The case is very different with the males of 

 many other animals. We see this in the horns of stags 

 and of certain kinds of antelopes in which the females 

 are hornless. With many animals the canine teeth in the 

 upper or lower jaw, or in both, are much larger in the males 

 than in the females, or are absent in the latter, with the 

 exception sometimes of a hidden rudiment. Certain ante- 

 lopes, the musk-deer, camel, horse, boar, various apes, 

 seals, and the walrus, offer instances. In the females of 

 the walrus the tusks are sometimes quite absent.* In the 

 male elephant of India and in the male dugong' the upper 

 incisors form offensive weapons. In the male narwhal the 

 left canine alone is developed into the well-known, spirally 

 twisted, so-called horn, which is sometimes from nine to 

 ten feet in length. It is believed that the males use these 

 horns for fighting together; for "an unbroken one can 

 rarely be got, and occasionally one may be found with the 



* Mr. Lamont ("Seasons with the Sea-Horsea," 1861, p. 143) says that a 

 good tusk of the male walrus weighs 4 pounds, and is longer than that of the 

 female, which weighs about 3 pounds. The males are described as fighting 

 ferociously. On the occasional absence of the tusks in the female, see Mr. B. 

 Brown, "Proc. Zool. Soc," 1868, p. 429. 



' Owen, "Anatomy of Vertebrates," voL iii. p. 283. 



