C.IIAP. XVII. 
LAW OF BATTLE. 
243 
It is not probable, at least in most cases, that the females 
have actually been saved from acquiring such weapons, 
owing to their being useless and superfluous, or in some 
way injurious. On the contrary, as they are often used 
by the males of many animals for various purposes, 
more especially as a defence against their enemies, it is 
a surprising fact that they are so poorly developed or 
quite absent in the females. No doubt with female deer 
the development during each recurrent season of great 
branching horns, and with female elephants the deve- 
lopment of immense tusks, would have been a great 
waste of vital power, on the admission that they were 
of no use to the females. Consequently variations in 
the size of these organs, leading to their suppression, 
would have come under the control of natural selection, 
and if limited in their transmission to the female off- 
spring would not have interfered with their develop- 
ment through sexual selection in the males. But how 
on this view can we explain the presence of horns in the 
females of certain antelopes, and of tusks in the females 
of many animals, which are only of slightly less size 
than in the males ? The explanation in almost all cases 
must, I believe, be sought in the laws of transmission. 
As the reindeer is the single species in the whole 
family of Deer in which the female is furnished with 
horns, though somewhat smaller, thinner, and less 
branched than in the male, it might naturally be 
thought that they must be of some special use to her. 
There is, however, some evidence opposed to this view. 
The female retains her horns from the time when they 
are fully developed, namely in September, throughout 
the winter, until May, when she brings forth her young ; 
whilst the male casts his horns much earlier, towards the 
end of November. As both sexes have the same require- 
ments and follow the same habits of life, and as the male 
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