direct product. The relations between this mob and the old male are always strained, the latter has constantly to be on the watch to shield his marital rights.

For long the mere menace of his presence suffices for such protection, but with age-the young bulls becoming more bold-struggles take place which sooner or later, from mere force of numbers, end in the rout or death of the parent. We may here cite the mention made by Mr. Darwin1 of Lord Tankerville's account of the battles of the wild bulls in Chillingham Park: In 1861 several contended for mastery, and it was observed that two of the younger bulls attacked in concert the old leader of the herd, overthrew and disabled him, so that he was believed by the keepers to be lying mortally wounded in a neighbouring wood. But a few days afterwards one of the young bulls approached the wood alone, and then the monarch of the chase, who had been lashing himself up for vengeance, came out and in a short time killed his antagonist. He then quietly joined the herd, and long held undisputed sway.' I may add from my own observation among half-wild herds in the colonies, that often when the old patriarch is not absolutely killed in such cases, he is forced to quit the herd. He then becomes a solitary exile, always exceptionally savage and dangerous to approach or molest. It seems to me probable that we have here an explanation of the occurrence of the existence of the well-known 'rogue' elephant, which is always a male and notoriously dangerous.

One important fact must here, however, be noted; that before such death or exile takes place, and the sons reach an age which enables them successfully to dispute the supremacy of the father, the daughters have reached puberty and borne produce to the sire-this matter, as will be seen later, has an important bearing on our general argument-on our theory of Primal Law. Amongst horses, again, which have become wild, exactly the same facts are to be observed. Each herd has one head, and this, as natural selection would imply, 1 Descent of Man, p. 501.

is the most powerful stallion; he is the master and owner of the females, and this mastery he retains until overpowered by other males, which, as before, are almost invariably his own progeny. In fact, any strange male would probably have first to run the gauntlet of this outlying herd of exiled sons before he could reach the father. It is, however, again to be noted that he is rarely thus overpowered by even the combined efforts of his sons, before his daughters have reached such an age as to have produced offspring to their father.

This system of sequence of generations in breeding is, indeed, so universal in a state of nature amongst all animals, as to seem to point to the fact that in-breeding between father and daughter cannot be so prejudicial as some believe. Its efficacy in type-fixing is at least very great, if, as experiments of my own in pig-breeding on these lines would lead me to think, the question of prepotency is merely a matter of such close in-breeding repeated for generations. We may note here that if, as is probable, the produce, on the contrary, of a full brother and sister are degenerate, nature seems to attempt to prevent its occurrence. On the succession of the sons to the father's rights, speedy conflicts from sexual jealousy arise amidst the former and lead to a rapid segregation of the herd, in which the chances of own brother and sister continuing to mate are slight. Until this segregration, however, does take place, nothing is more curious to watch than the attitude and relations of these young males among themselves, the oldest and strongest claiming prior marital rights, but no more.

The same phenomena in social economy may be observed with even greater intensity in lower ranks of life than the quadrupeds. For instance, in a large flock of game fowl which I had an opportunity to observe closely for several years, during which they had nearly relapsed into a state of nature, there was an exact reproduction of all these details. There existed the same division into small family groups, each headed by an adult male, the same subordination imposed on the junior males of their banishment at puberty, as

also their inevitable combined attack, when sufficiently powerful, on their paternal enemy. His death resulted in the same communistic assumption of his rights, with a subsequent disruption, from jealousy, into the typical smaller and separate groups.

We thus find an identical condition of the sexual relations between the females of a group and its older and younger male members to be common in the animal world-the domination, in fact, of an idea that might, in the person of the senior male, confers marital rights over the female members of the family, and an inchoate rule of action resulting therefrom; which bars from the enjoyment of such right each junior male. To hold that man, whilst in the animal stage, should form an exception to the general rule seems unreasonable. If, as we are inclined to believe, he was originally quite non-social animal, the fact becomes more possible still that, as with modern types of anthropoid apes, each adult as head of a group was at feud with every other. As regards the social evolution, it would indeed seem most natural that, as Mr. Darwin conceived, the first step in progress should have been taken by animals already united gregariously, and thus already imbued with some social feelings. Strange to say, the path in advance which the ancestor of man, in the light of our hypothesis, was destined to follow, disclosed itself as an indirect consequence of the very intensity of his non-social characteristic. In fact, as I fancy will become evident in the development of our argument, the only line of progress open to man was one inaccessible to animals of gregarious habits, judging by the economy of life in a troop of mandrills or baboons.

Having ventured to differ from the great naturalist on this point, I would with deference take exception to his further statement-That the younger males, being thus expelled and wandering about, would, when at last successful in finding a partner, prevent too close inter-breeding within the limits of the same family.' This, if I understand it rightly, would convey the idea that this youthful band quitted the scene

of their birth, and deserted entirely their original habitat in the forest. I cannot help considering it an error to imagine that such wanderings could thus be without bounds. Nothing seems to me more remarkable and irrevocable in savage Nature than the rigid localisation of all living things in her realm. No fish in the sea, no bird in the air, but has its local habitation, which only becomes free to the stranger on the death of the occupant.' No corner on earth but seems to hold its lawful tenant, and the bounds thereof are defined within rigid limits. Within, there is safety, with a sense of ownership; without, is the great unknown, possessed by others, fiercely ready to defend their rights, and threaten every danger and death to the stranger intruder-unless quite otherwise formidable than adolescent youth.

It is thus probable, in fact, that in common with the lower animals, the band of exiled young males of our anthropoid ancestor haunted the neighbourhood of the parent herd, remaining thus on familiar ground, and in hearing of friendly voices. For we must remember that their feud was only with the paternal parent. In the magic alembic of time the constantly increasing shadow of their presence would take sudden dreadful form, but in parricidal crime alone. The sequel in disastrous incest, which Mr. Darwin would here conjecture at, Nature alone has ever been impotent to deal with. The problem of an effectual bar to undesirable union between brother and sister was solved by man alone, and in the Primal Law. An effort of his embryonic intellect, thus early defiant of Nature, the law placed ethically, for once and for ever, a distinction between him and every other creature.

This fact is well known to anglers for trout.—A. L.

CHAPTER III

MAN VARYING FROM ANIMALS

Effect of the absence of a special pairing season on nascent man.-Consequent state of ceaseless war between sire and young males.-Man already more than an ape.-Results of his prolonged infancy and of maternal love.-A young male permitted to live in the parent group.-Conditions in which this novelty arose.

IN common, then, with their nearest congeners of to-day, we have found each male head of a group of our anthropoid ancestors in direct antagonism with every other male, and a consequent disruption of the family at each encounter with a superior force. This disruption, in its effects on a species of non-gregarious habits, would result not only in the dispersal of its members, but in the destruction of what material progress in the accumulation of property might have accrued. As this would have included all germs of mechanical discovery, again doubtless due solely to the superior constructive faculties of the male, it is evident that advance in a race thus socially constituted was quite impossible.

Now this antagonism of male with male, with all its retrograde consequences, a struggle fierce enough in all animals, had a more intense effect on nascent man than on any other creature that had ever existed. An added force was caused by the disappearance in the nascent human species of that season of physical and mental repose, granted by Nature to the rest of creation, when not actually in the moment or season of rut. This ever-recurring but limited period, ordinarily appearing for a certain fixed epoch in each year, by the exigencies of supply and demand in the necessarily abundant food required for nursing mothers, had lost its date-fixing