MAMMALS, 579 



Africa he often uses one tusk, always the same, to probe 

 the ground and thus ascertain whether it will bear his 

 weight. The common bull defends the herd with his 

 horns; and the elk in Sweden has been known, according 

 to Lloyd, to strike a wolf dead with a single blow of his 

 great horns. Many similar facts could be given. One of 

 the most curious secondary uses to which the horns of an 

 animal may be occasionally put is that observed by Capt. 

 Hutton *.with the wild goat {Capra mgagrus) of the Hima- 

 layas and, as it is also said with the ibex, namely, that 

 when the male accidentally falls from a height he bends 

 inward his head, and, by alighting on his massive horns, 

 breaks the shock. The female cannot thus use her horns, 

 which are smaller, but from her more quiet disposition she 

 does not need this strange kind of shield so much. 



Each male animal uses his weapons in his own peculiar 

 fashion. The common ram makes a charge and butts with 

 such force with the bases of his horns that I have seen a 

 powerful man knocked over like a child. Goats and cer- 

 tain species of sheep, for instance the Ovis cydoceros of 

 Afghanistan,! rear on their hind legs, and then not only 

 butt, but *^ make a cut down and a jerk up, with the ribbed 

 front of their cimeter-shaped horn, as with a saber. When 

 the 0. cyclocerus attacked a large domestic ram, who was a 

 noted bruiser, he conquered him by the sheer novelty of 

 his mode of fighting, always closing at once with his 

 adversary, and catching him across the face and nose with 

 a sharp, drawing jerk of the head, and then bounding out 

 of the way before the blow could be returned.^' In Pem- 

 brokeshire a male goat, the master of a flock which during 

 several generations had run wild, was known to have killed 

 several males in single combat; this goat possessed enormous 

 horns, measuring thirty-nine inches in a straight line from 

 tip to tip. The common bull, as every one knows, gores 

 and tosses his opponent; but the Italian buffalo is said 

 never to use his horns; he gives a tremendous blow with 

 his convex forehead, and then tramples on his fallen enemy 

 with his knees an instinct which the common bull does 



* "Calcutta Journal of Nat. Hist.," vol. ii, 1843, p. 526. 



tMr. Blyth, in "Land and Water," March, 1867, p. 134, on the 

 authority of Capt. Hutton and others. For the wild Pembrokeshire 

 goats, see the "Field," 1869, p. 150, 



