244 
SEXUAL SELEETIOX : MAMMALS. 
Paet IL 
sheds his horns during the winter, it is very improbable 
that they can be of any special service to the female at 
this season,. which includes the larger proportion of the 
time during which she bears horns. Nor is it probable 
that she can have inherited horns from some ancient 
progenitor of the whole family of deer, for, from the fact 
of the males alone of so many species in all quarters of 
the globe possessing horns, we may conclude that this 
was the primordial character of the group. Hence it 
appears that horns must have been transferred from the 
male to the female at a period subsequent to the diver- 
gence of the various species from a common stock ; but 
that this was not effected for the sake of giving her any 
special advantage.^ 
We know that the horns are developed at a most 
unusually early age in the reindeer ; but what the cause 
of this may have been is not known. The effect, how- 
ever, has apparently been the transference of the horns 
to both sexes. It is intelligible on the hypothesis of 
pangenesis, that a very slight change in the constitution 
of the male, either in the tissues of the forehead or in 
the gemmules of the horns, might lead to their early 
development ; and as the young of both sexes have 
nearly the same constitution before the period of repro^' 
duction, the horns, if developed at an early age in the 
male, would tend to be developed equally in both sexes. 
In support of this view, we should bear in mind that the 
horns are always transmitted through the female, and 
that she has a latent capacity for their development, as 
we see in old or diseased females.^ Moreover the females 
^ On the structure and shedding of the horns of the reindeer, Hoif- 
herg, ‘ Amoenitates Acad.’ voL iv. 1788, p. 149. See Kichardson, ‘ Fauna 
Bor. Americana,’ p. 241, in regard to the American variety or species ; 
also Major W. Boss King, ‘ The Sportsman in Canada,’ 1866, p. 80. 
® Isidore Geoffrey St.-Hilaire, ‘ Essais de Zoolog. . Generale,’ 184L 
p. 513. Other masculine characters, besides the horns, are sometimes 
