In contemplating these facts one asks: What are the underlying factors of this variability? What is the significance of the branching? What end is attained by the annual shedding? That the antlers constitute very effective weapons of offence there can be no doubt, and one is inclined to regard the branching as the outcome of natural selection, on the assumption that branched antlers would be less deadly than lance-like weapons. It would perhaps be tempting to accept this interpretation as all sufficient were it not for the evidence afforded by the hollow-horned ruminants. The Oryx and the Kudu, for example, are lance-bearers, and therefore show conclusively that stags similarly armed might well have continued to survive in spite of the foils which the “tines” provide. Darwin, long since, guardedly suggested that while these weapons primarily served for offensive purposes, their elaborate systems of branching might have been brought about by sexual selection. That is to say, the extreme beauty of the weapons may excite the admiration of the females as well as our own. Granting this, he inferred they might have played an important part in elaborating the branching by constantly displaying a preference to mate with those males possessed of the largest and most branched antlers. But there are many and serious objections to this suggestion, and the most important of all is the fact that the female is allowed no choice in the selection of her lord and master. We can, then, only regard the antlers of deer as another instance of the survival of a “fortuitous” but inherent variation, which survived because, whatever the defects thereof, they proved advantageous in the struggle for existence.