Chap. XVII.] LAW OF BATTLE. 241 



some ancient male progenitor of the Oryx acquired mod- 

 erately long horns, directed a little backward, he would 

 be compelled in his battles with rival males to bend his 

 head somewhat inward or downward, as is now done by 

 certain stags ; and it is not improbable that he might 

 have acquired the habit of at first occasionally and after- 

 ward of regularly kneeling down. In this case it is al- 

 most certain that the males which possessed the longest 

 horns would have had a great advantage over others witli 

 shorter horns ; and then the horns would gradually have 

 been rendered longer and longer, through sexual selection, 

 until they acquired their present extraordinary length 

 and position. 



With stags of many kinds the branching of the horns 

 offers a curious case of difficulty ; for certainly a single 

 straight point would inflict a much more serious wound 

 than several diverging points. In Sir Philip Egerton's 

 museum there is a horn of the red-deer (Cervus ela- 

 phus) thirty inches in length, with "not fewer than 

 fifteen snags or branches ; " and at Moritzburg there 

 is still preserved a pair of antlers of a red-deer, shot in 

 1G99 by Frederick I., each of which bears the aston- 

 ishing number of thirty-three branches. Richardson 

 figures a pair of antlers of the wild-reindeer with twenty- 

 nine points. 20 From the manner in which the horns 

 are branched, and more especially from deer being 

 known occasionally to fight together by kicking with 

 their forefeet, 21 M. Bailly actually came to the con- 



20 Owen, on the Horns of Ked-deer, c British Fossil Mammals,' 1846 

 p. 478; 'Forest Creatures,' by Charles Boner, 1861, pp. 62, 76. Rich- 

 ardson on the Horns of the Reindeer, 'Fauna Bor. Americana,' 182!, 

 p. 240. 



81 Hon J D. Caton (' Ottawa Acad, of Nat. Science,' May, 1868, p 9), 

 gays that the -American deer fight with their forefeet, after " the ques- 

 tion of superiority has been once settled and acknowledged in the herd '» 



30 



