248 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



tion of means to ends ; and to ask, in the third place, why such 

 weapons are variably present or absent in the females of genera 

 and species whose males possess them universally. 



II. Historical. 



In the history of frontal weapons the salient feature is their 

 gradual evolution in an ascending scale ; in the history of ungu- 

 lates, it is the immense surviving majority of horned and antlered 

 genera ; in the history of carnivores, it is the early appearance 

 in geological time of highly specialised and destructive types. 

 I shall endeavour to show the bearing of these facts upon a 

 protective theory of horns and antlers. 



Sexual selection, in fixing the attention upon a particular class 

 of phenomena, leads us to over-estimate the part played by sexual 

 passion, and to under-estimate the part played by self-preservation, 

 in the struggles of ungulate life during the slow succession of 

 ages, when the inhabited earth was nothing but a wide hunting 

 ground at the mercy of the Cats and Dogs. Our "zoologically 

 impoverished world" — our civilisation, which keeps in check the 

 larger flesh-eaters that still wait upon extinction — even our 

 subjective notions of " the ethical aspects of evolution," combine 

 to hide from view the long reign of feline and canine " butchering 

 machines, which have succeeded one another through the Tertiary 

 epoch, therefore for many thousands, or more probably millions, 

 of years" (Huxley), and have marked the course of the ungulates 

 in history with a continuous stream of blood. Darwin's consoling 

 optimism that, in the struggle for life, " the war of nature is not 

 incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt," is 

 irreconcilable with the experience of those conversant with wild 

 countries and wild beasts. Sexual passion — the reproductive 

 instinct — occupies less than a tenth part of normal ruminant 

 life; fear — the self-preserving instinct— rules the whole of it. 

 " The beasts of prey," writes a competent authority (Sir Samuel 

 Baker), " are the terror of the weaker species, which cannot even 

 assuage their thirst in the hottest season without halting upon 

 the margin of the stream and scrutinising the country right and 

 left before they dare to stoop their heads to drink. Even then 

 the herd will not drink together, but a portion will act as 

 watchers, to give notice of an enemy should it be discerned while 



