Sex / by Patrick Geddes ... and J. Arthur Thomson.

  • Patrick Geddes
Date:
[1914], ©1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sex / by Patrick Geddes ... and J. Arthur Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    have become secondarily the possession of the female reindeer. It is difficult to decide between these rival views. To explain the possession of antlers by the female reindeer, Cunningham refers to the fact that the females use them as weapons and that the older females often lead large herds of young males and females. In cattle, sheep and goats, the horns usually occur in both sexes; in antelopes, they may be confined to the males, as in kudu and saiga, but in most cases, e. g. eland and oryx, they occur in both sexes; in the aberrant pronghorn of the Rockies the horns are rudimentary in the female. The long curved tusks of the wild boar, the ex- aggerated tusks of the babirusa, the tusks of the Indian elephant, the spur on the hind-leg of the duckmole and the echidna are other well-known masculine features. Among Birds sex-dimorphism reaches a climax in the birds of Paradise, the humming- birds, and the game-birds. In the males it is common to find specially decorative feathers which can be erected and displayed to the best advantage. Every one knows the magnificent tail feathers of the peacock, the wing feathers of the Argus pheasant which are raised to form a circular fan, the curved outermost tail feathers of the blackcock, the brilliant tufts and elongated tail feathers of many humming-birds, the decorations of the birds of Paradise, which baffle description, the remarkable tail of the lyre-bird, and the long neck feathers of the ruffs. Besides more decorative plumage the male bird often exhibits other distinctive features.