We know that the horns are developed at a most unusually early age in the reindeer; but what the cause of this may have been is not known. The effect, however, has apparently been the transference of the horns to both sexes. It is intelligible on the hypothesis of pangenesis, that a very slight change in the constitution of the male, either in the tissues of the forehead or in the gemmules of the horns, might lead to their early development; and as the young of both sexes have nearly the same constitution before the period of reproduction, the horns, if developed at an early age in the male, would tend to be developed equally in both sexes. In support of this view, we should bear in mind that the horns are always transmitted through the female, and that she has a latent capacity for their development, as we see in old or diseased females.[296] Moreover the females of some other species of deer either normally or occasionally exhibit rudiments of horns; thus the female of _Cervulus moschatus_ has “bristly tufts, ending in a knob, instead of a horn;” and “in most specimens of the female Wapiti (_Cervus Canadensis_) there is a sharp bony protuberance in the place of the horn.”[297] From these several considerations we may conclude that the possession of fairly well-developed horns by the female reindeer, is due to the males having first acquired them as weapons for fighting with other males; and secondarily to their development from some unknown cause at an unusually early age in the males, and their consequent transmission to both sexes.