The horns and antlers of ruminants. 29 i 



a certain compensation in greater speed and keener sense of 

 danger, but the solidarity of herding life provided a more effective 

 safeguard in the presence of armed males, who became the chief 

 protection of the herd. The herding Bison was more than a 

 match for the Wolf, and the herding Buffalo for the Tiger ; the 

 herding Antelopes could hold their own with the Lion, and will 

 rescue a calf from the armed hunter; and among the herding 

 Deer, when danger threatens, it is the master stags that take the 

 lead. On the other hand, the undoubted maternal gain in the 

 possession of defensive weapons, when present, is proved not only 

 by their long- continued and extensive survival among female 

 ruminants, but more particularly by their marked development 

 in female oxen and in the females of certain Antelopes. 



It may be noted, in conclusion, that frontal weapons, con- 

 sidered in respect of sex, present no difficulties to the theory of 

 their protective origin. Their generally inferior calibre and 

 partial absence on the female side admit of explanation as a case 

 of established biological laws relative to growth and reproduction ; 

 while their generically superior calibre and normal presence in 

 the males denote a physiological organisation capable of ampler 

 individual expansion, and a protective instinct which put the 

 fighting equipment constantly to the test of battle. 



We may therefore conclude, generally, that the horns and 

 antlers of ruminants are the result of a defensive adjustment in 

 biological answer to carnivorous teeth and claws, and consequent 

 upon the relation of destroyer and destroyed which obtained 

 between carnivores and ungulates throughout Tertiary time. 

 They disclose their protective origin and purpose in a structural 

 adaptation which has secured, through natural selection, their 

 relative harmlessness in sexual combat between the individuals 

 of a species and their absolute efficiency against its external foes. 

 Their variable presence or absence, and their variable calibre 

 when present, in the females of genera and species whose males 

 possess them universally, is due to the physiological demands of 

 the maternal function, which were generally compatible with the 

 development of horns, but generally incompatible with the de- 

 velopment of antlers. Their historical appearance in the Miocene 

 age of the Tertiary period is contemporaneous with a vast ex- 

 tinction of hornless ungulate families, and their subsequent 

 development in an ascending scale corresponds with the gradual 



