238 SEXUAL SELECTION: MAMMALS. [Part IL 



single blow of his great horns. Many similar facts could 

 be given. One of the most curious secondary uses to 

 which the horns of any animal are occasionally put, is 

 that observed by Captain Hutton," with the wild-goat 

 (Capra (pgagrus) of the Himalayas, and, as it is 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 so much 

 need this strange kind of shield. 



Each male animal iises his weapons in his own pecu- 

 liar 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 as easily as a child. 

 Goats and certain species of sheep, for instance the Ovis 

 cycloceros 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 scimitar-shaped horn, as 

 Avith a sabre. When the 0. cycloceros attacked a large 

 domestic ram, who was a noted bruiser, he conquered him 

 by the sheer novelty of his mode of fighting, always clos- 

 ing at once with his adversary, and catching him across 

 the face and nose with a sharp drawing jerk of his head, 

 and then bounding out of the way before the blow could 

 be returned." In Pembrokeshire a male goat, the master 

 of a flock which during several generations had run wild, 

 Avas known to have killed several other 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 



" 'Calcutta Journal of Nat. Hist.' vol. ii. 18 13, p. 526. 



•8 Mr. Hh'th, in 'Land and Water,' March, 1867, p. 134, on the an- 

 thority of Captain Hutton and others. For the wild Pembrokeshire 

 goats see the 'Field,' 18G9, p. 150. 



