Chap. XVII. 
LXW OF BATTLE. 
247 
breeds of the sheep and goat, the males alone are fur- 
nished with horns ; and it is a significant fact, that in 
one such breed of sheep on the Guinea coast, the horns 
are not developed, as Mr. Win wood Eeade informs me, 
in the castrated male ; so that they are affected in 
this respect like the horns of stags. In some breeds, 
as in that of N. Wales, in which both sexes are properly 
horned, the ewes are very liable to be hornless. In 
these same sheep, as I have been informed by a trust- 
worthy witness who purposely inspected a flock during 
the lambing-season, the horns at birth are generally 
more fully developed in the male than in the female. 
With the adult musk-ox {Ovihos moscliatus) the horns of 
the male are larger than those of the female, and in the 
latter the bases do not touch.^^ In regard to ordinary 
cattle Mr. Blyth remarks : In most of the wild bovine 
animals the horns are both longer and thicker in the 
bull than in the cow, and in the cow-banteng {Bos 
sondaicus) the horns are remarkably small, and in- 
dined much backwards. In the domestic races of 
cattle, both of the humped and humpless types, the 
horns are short and thick in the bull, longer and 
more slender in the cow and ox ; and in the Indian 
buffalo, they are shorter and thicker in the bull, longer 
and more slender in the cow. In the wild gaour 
{B, gaurus) the horns are mostly both longer and 
thicker in the bull than in the cow.” Hence with 
most sheath-horned ruminants the horns of the male 
are either longer or stronger than those of the female. 
With the Bhinoceros simus, as I may here add, the 
horns of the female are generally longer but less power- 
ful than in the male ; and in some other species of 
Richardson, ‘Fauna Bor. Americana/ p. 278. 
‘ Land and Water/ 1867, p. 316. 
