female, who acquires her adult tints earlier in life than the male, is dark-grey above, the young of both sexes being of a deep chocolate colour. The male of the northern Phoca groenlandica is tawny grey, with a curious saddle-shaped dark mark on the back; the female is much smaller, and has a very different appearance, being "dull white or yellowish straw-colour, with a tawny hue on the back;" the young at first are pure white, and can "hardly be distinguished among the icy hummocks and snow, their colour thus acting as a protection."[1]
With Ruminants sexual differences of colour occur more commonly than in any other order. A difference of this kind is general in the Strepsicerene antelopes; thus the male nilghau (Portax picta) is bluish-grey and much darker than the female, with the square white patch on the throat, the white marks on the fetlocks, and the black spots on the ears all much more distinct. We have seen that in this species the crests and tufts of hair are likewise more developed in the male than in the hornless female. I am informed by Mr. Blyth that the male, without shedding his hair, periodically becomes darker during the breeding-season. Young males cannot be distinguished from young females until about twelve months old; and if the male is emasculated before this period, he never, according to the same authority, changes colour. The importance of this latter fact, as evidence that the colouring of the Portax is of sexual origin becomes obvious, when we hear[2] that neither the red summer-coat nor the blue winter-coat of the Virginian deer is at all affected by emasculation. With most or all of the highly-ornamented species of Tragelaphus the males are darker than the hornless females, and their crests of hair are more fully developed. In the male of that magnificent antelope, the Derbyan eland, the body is redder, the whole neck much blacker, and the white band which separates these colours, broader, than in the female. In the Cape eland also, the male is slightly darker than the female.[3]
In the Indian black-buck (A. bezoartica), which belongs to another tribe of antelopes, the male is very dark, almost black; whilst the hornless female is fawn-coloured. We meet in this
- ↑ Dr. Murie on the Otaria, 'Proc. Zool. Soc.' 1869, p. 108. Mr. R. Brown, on the P. groenlandica, ibid. 1868, p. 417. See also on the colours of seals, Desmarest, ibid. p. 243, 249.
- ↑ Judge Caton, in 'Trans. Ottawa Acad. of Nat. Sciences,' 1868, p. 4.
- ↑ Dr. Gray, 'Cat. of Mamm. in Brit. Mus.' part iii. 1852, pp. 134–142; also Dr. Gray, 'Gleanings from the Menagerie of Knowsley,' in which there is a splendid drawing of the Oreas derbianus: see the text on Tragelaphus. For the Cape eland (Oreas canna), see Andrew Smith, 'Zoology of S. Africa,' pl. 41 and 42. There are also many of these antelopes in the Zoological Gardens.
