246 
SEXUAL selection: mammals. 
Paet ip. 
is therefore probable that their presence or absence in 
the females of some species, and their more or less per- 
fect condition in the females of other species, depend, 
not on their being of some special use, but simply on 
the form of inheritance which has prevailed. It ac- 
cords with this view that even in the same restricted 
genus both sexes of some species, and the males alone 
of other species, are thus provided. It is a remarkable 
fact that, although the females of Antilope hezoartica 
are normally destitute of horns, Mr. Blyth has seen no 
less than three females thus furnished; and there was 
no reason to suppose that they were old or diseased. 
The males of this species have long straight spirated 
horns, nearly parallel to each other, and directed back- 
wards. Those of the female, when present, are very 
different in shape, for they are not spirated, and 
spreading widely bend round, so that their points are 
directed forwards. It is a still more remarkable fact 
that ill the castrated male, as Mr. Blyth informs me, the 
horns are of the same peculiar shape as in the female, 
but longer and thicker. In all cases the differences 
between the horns of the males and females, and of 
castrated and entire males, probably depend on various 
causes,: — on the more or less complete transference of 
male characters to the females, — on the former state 
of the progenitors of the species, — and partly perhaps on 
the horns being differently nourished, in nearly the same 
manner as the spurs of the domestic cock, when inserted 
into the comb or other parts of the body, assume various 
abnormal forms from being differently nourished. 
In all the wild species of goats and sheep the horns 
are larger in the mele than in the female, and are some- 
times quite absent m the latter.^^ In several domestic 
Gri’ay, ‘ Catalogue Mamm. Brit. Miis.’ part iii. 1852, "p. 160. 
