Chapter 17 - Page 2

antagonist. He then quietly joined the herd, and long held undisputed sway. Admiral Sir B. J. Sulivan informs me that, when he lived in the Falkland Islands, he imported a young English stallion, which frequented the hills near Port William with eight mares. On these hills there were two wild stallions, each with a small troop of mares; "and it is certain that these stallions would never have approached each other without fighting. Both had tried singly to fight the English horse and drive away his mares, but had failed. One day they came in together and attacked him. This was seen by the captain who had charge of the horses, and who, on riding to the spot, found one of the two stallions engaged with the English horse, whilst the other was driving away the mares, and had already separated four from the rest. The captain settled the matter by driving the whole party into a corral, for the wild stallions would not leave the mares."

* See Scrope (Art of Deer-stalking, p. 17) on the locking of the horns with the Cervus elaphus. Richardson, in Fauna Bor. Americana, 1829, p. 252, says that the wapiti, moose, and reindeer have been found thus locked together. Sir. A. Smith found at the Cape of Good Hope the skeletons of two gnus in the same condition.

Male animals which are provided with efficient cutting or tearing teeth for the ordinary purposes of life, such as the Carnivora, Insectivora, and rodents, are seldom furnished with weapons especially adapted for fighting with their rivals. The case is very different with the males of many other animals. We see this in the horns of stags and of certain kinds of 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.* 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