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Show 298 MR. ALSTON ON FEMALE DEER WITH HORNS. [Mar. 18, In Germany, where the Roedeer is more plentiful than in this country, many does with antlers have been recorded, no fewer than forty instances being known to Dr. Altum l. Most of these were barren animals, and the antlers were always of a more or less abortive character, except in one case, in which the normal male form was well reproduced; but several were fertile, and were either with young when they were killed, or had recently given birth to fawns. The abnormal antlers appear to be always persistent, and to be permanently covered with the velvet. In America the same abnormality appears not to be very uncommon in the Virginian Deer (Cariacus virginianus, Bodd.). Judge Caton says that he has seen many accounts of does with small, simple, velvet-clad antlers, and describes such a head in the National Museum at Washington, in which the beams are about six inches long. He has heard of a similar case of a doe killed in California, probably Cariacus columbianus (Richardson)2; and Mr. Dresser informs me that in New Brunswick be once examined in the flesh a female Moose (Alces machlis) with well-developed bifurcated antlers. In the Deer of the restricted genus Cervus, on the other hand, the occurrence of antlered females seems to be extremely rare. In all the voluminous literature of German woodcraft Dr. Altum has only been able to find records of five cases of the abnormality in tbe Red Deer (Cervus elaphus, Linn.), of which the latest dates from early in the last century3. I have not been able to find any record of its occurrence in the Fallow Deer, nor, in fact, in any other species of Cervus, except the Sambur, C. aristotelis, Cuv., of which Mr. Vincent Ball informs me that there is a hind with a single antler now living in the Zoological Gardens at Calcutta. W e thus find, scanty as is the hitherto recorded evidence, that the development of antlers in the female is a not very uncommon abnormality in the two best-known genera of Sir Victor Brooke's section of Telemetacarpi (Capreolus and Cariacus), occurs in a third (Alces), and is normal in a fourth (Rangifer), while, as far as we know, it is extremely rare in the Plesiometacarpi. As the former division is the least specialized, these facts seem to me to indicate that the abnormalities are instances of atavism, and that the primeval Deer probably possessed antlers in both sexes. I make this suggestion, however, with all deference ; for the contrary view has been adopted by Mr. Darwin, who holds that both the antlers of the Cervidee and the horns of the Bovidee were primarily and essentially sexual weapons, first developed in the males only. " W h e n the males are provided with weapons which in the female are absent, there can hardly be a doubt that these serve for fighting with other males, and that they are acquired through sexual selection, and were transmitted to the male sex only"4. Of the Reindeer he says:-"We may conclude that the possession of fairly well-developed horns by the female Reindeer is due to the males having at first acquired them as weapons for fighting with other males, and, secondarily, to their development from some 1 Forstzoologie, i. p. 230. 2 Antelope and Deer of America, pp. 232, 233. Forstzoologie, i. p. 211. 4 Descent of M a n (2nd ed.), p. 502. |