animal by hormones from the outgrowth of tissue produced by external mechanical stimulation, while at the same time they were permeated by the testicular hormone produced either by the gametocytes themselves or by interstitial cells of the testis. When the head begins to form in the process of individual development, the factors, according to my theory, have a tendency to form the special growth of tissue of which the incipient antler consists, but part of the stimulus is wanting, and is not completed until the testicular hormone is produced and diffused into the circulation--that is to say, when the testes are becoming mature and functional. I do not claim that this theory in complete--it is impossible to understand the process completely in the present state of knowledge--but I maintain that it is the only theory which affords any explanation of the remarkable facts concerning the influence of the hormones from the reproductive organs on the development of secondary sexual characters, while at the same time explaining the adaptive relation of these characters or organs to the sexual habits of the various species. On the mutation hypothesis, adaptation is purely accidental. T. H. Morgan considers that the appearance of two slightly different shades of eye colour in male and female in a culture of a fruit-fly in a bottle is sufficient to settle the whole problem of sexual dimorphism, and to supersede Darwin's complicated theory of sexual selection. The possibility of a Lamarckian explanation he does not even mention. He would doubtless assume that the antlers of stags arose as a mutation, without explaining how they came to be affected by the testicular hormone, and that when they arose the stags found them convenient as fighting weapons. But the complicated adaptive relations are not to be disposed of by the simple word mutation. The males have sexual instincts, themselves dependent on the testicular hormone, which develop sexual jealousy and rivalry, and the Ruminants fight by butting with their heads because they have no incisor teeth in the upper jaw, or tusks, which are used in fighting in other species. Doubtless, mutations have occurred in antlers as in other characters; in fact all hereditary characters are subject to mutation. This in the most probable explanation, not only of the occasional occurrence of hornless individual stags, but of the differences between the antlers of different species, for there is no reason to believe that the special character of the antler in each species is adapted to a special mode of fighting in each species.