The Progress of Zoology. 257 



the domestic circle, and no variation or deterioration of the 

 race can possibly arise through their communication of a 

 diminished vital force. But their removal throws the task of 

 procreation on a fewer number of males, and a given amount of 

 procreative force is of necessity spread over a larger surface; in 

 other words, every ram, bull, and . stallion, has to beget a 

 larger number of progeny than it would do in a state of Nature, 

 and that progeny, it seems fair to assume, must inherit less of 

 the initial vigour which is the foundation of the physical con- 

 stitution of the individual. Variation itself, apart from this 

 consideration, appears to be in the majority of cases congenital, 

 and so representative of the circumstances attending the phy- 

 sical origin of the individual life. The story in the Cloud of 

 Witnesses of a man yielding milk when a child was put to his 

 breast during the persecution in Scotland, receives some con- 

 firmation from the account given by Humboldt of a human 

 male that gave forth milk. Livingstone tells of grandmothers 

 suckling grandchildren, which are cases quite to the point, 

 and evidently of the class of congenital variation. In the 

 individual, castration has an immense influence in modifying 

 all the characteristics peculiar to the male sex; and barren 

 females and impotent males, whether of the genus Homo 

 or any other genus, are influenced in their whole physical 

 character in a manner consistent with their exceptional sexual 

 condition. Among our domestic horned animals, the size 

 and configuration of the horns vary so much from the normal 

 type, that we have a tolerably safe index thereby to the 

 whole pedigree of the races, and congenital peculiarities are 

 most strikingly exhibited in the variations which the horns 

 exhibit. It is said that if a stag is castrated when Ins horns 

 are in a state of perfection they will never be shed ; that if the 

 operation is performed when the head is bare they will never be 

 regenerated ; and if it is done when secretion is actually going 

 on, a stunted, ill-formed, permanent horn is the result, more or 

 less developed, according to the period at which the animal is 

 emasculated. t In the museum of the College of Surgeons is 

 the head of a fallow-deer, bearing a pair of half developed 

 horns unequal in size, and wholly without palmations, but 

 of unusual thickness, and covered with wart-like protuberances 

 resembling incrustations. This animal was castrated; the 

 horns were not shed at the usual time, and they shortly after- 

 wards acquired the peculiar character which renders them so 

 unique as specimens. 



In horned animals that have never been subjected to 

 domestication, there is a remarkable constancy of character in 

 the development of the horns and their symmetry. The beau- 



* English Cyclopcedia, Kat. Hist. Cervidas, c. 843. 



