I3O NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



individuals. The bulls fight furiously amongst 

 themselves, using their long horns as effective 

 rapiers ; the thick skin of the shoulders conversely 

 provides them with a buckler, and the Midgan 

 Somalis, recognising this, themselves use beisa hide 

 in constructing their fighting shields. Beisa are 

 frequently attacked by lions though one would 

 suppose that even a lion would hesitate to face such 

 formidable weapons as the horns of this antelope. 1 



Spirited and pugnacious, beisa often lose an eye 

 in battle ; often, too, a horn is snapped off, so that 

 the animal becomes a unicorn. 



The beisa may really be the original of the 

 unicorn ; some have supposed the gemsbok to claim 

 this title a beast little likely in its far southern 

 habitat to have attracted the notice of the ancients. 

 But the beisa, as we have seen, even in the last 

 century occurred as near to the Egyptian frontier as 

 Suakin ; and the cartanozon which the Persians 

 designed on the monuments of Persepolis cor- 

 responded marvellously with the present species. 

 It had indeed but one horn ; but if the sculptor, 

 ignorant of perspective, had drawn the pair of 

 parallel straight horns as one (the further one being 

 accurately covered by its fellow) the difficulty 

 vanishes. Similarly, a clumsy attempt to depict the 



1. S weirs, an elderly Boer cited by Gordon Gumming, stated that he 

 had found the carcasses of the allied Cape gemsbok and the lion rotting 

 together on the veldt the lion slain by the antelope, which had been 

 unable to rid himself of his humbled foe. 



