antelopes in which the females are hornless. With many animals the canine teeth in the upper or lower jaw, or in both, are much larger in the males than in the females, or are absent in the latter, with the exception sometimes of a hidden rudiment. Certain antelopes, the musk-deer, camel, horse, boar, various apes, seals, and the walrus, offer instances. In the females of the walrus the tusks are sometimes quite absent.[1] In the male elephant of India and in the male dugong[2] the upper incisors form offensive weapons. In the male narwhal the left canine alone is developed into the well-known, spirally-twisted, so-called horn, which is sometimes from nine to ten feet in length. It is believed that the males use these horns for fighting together; for "an unbroken one can rarely be got, and occasionally one may be found with the point of another jammed into the broken place."[3] The tooth on the opposite side of the head in the male consists of a rudiment about ten inches in length, which is embedded in the jaw; but sometimes, though rarely, both are equally developed on the two sides. In the female both are always rudimentary. The male cachalot has a larger head than that of the female, and it no doubt aids him in his aquatic battles. Lastly, the adult male ornithorhynchus is provided with a remarkable apparatus, namely a spur on the foreleg, closely resembling the poison-fang of a venomous snake; but according to Harting, the secretion from the gland is not poisonous; and on the leg of the female there is a hollow, apparently for the reception of the spur.[4]
When the males are provided with weapons which in the females are absent, there can hardly be a doubt that these serve for fighting with other males; and that they were acquired through sexual selection, and were transmitted to the male sex alone. It is not probable, at least in most cases, that the females have been prevented from acquiring such weapons, on account of their being useless, superfluous, or in some way injurious. On the contrary, as they are often used by the males for various
- ↑ Mr. Lamont ('Seasons with the Sea-Horses,' 1861, p. 143) says that a good tusk of the male walrus weighs 4 pounds, and is longer than that of the female, which weighs about 3 pounds. The males are described as fighting ferociously. On the occasional absence of the tusks in the female, see Mr. R. Brown, 'Proc. Zool. Soc.' 1868, p. 429.
- ↑ Owen, 'Anatomy of Vertebrates,' vol. iii. p. 283.
- ↑ Mr. R. Brown, in 'Proc. Zool. Soc.' 1869, p. 553. See Prof. Turner, in Journal of 'Anat. and Phys.' 1872, p. 76, on the homological nature of these tusks. Also Mr. J. W. Clarke on two tusks being developed in the males, in 'Proc. Zoolog. Soc.' 1871, p. 42.
- ↑ Owen on the cachalot and Ornithorhynchus, ibid. vol. iii. pp. 638, 641. Harting is quoted by Dr. Zouteveen in the Dutch translat. of this work, vol. ii. p. 292.
