506 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



sionally and afterwards of regularly kneeling down. In this case 

 it is almost certain that the males which possessed the longest 

 horns would have had a great advantage over others with 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 branches of the horns offer a 

 curious case of difficulty; for certainly a single straight point 

 would inflict a much more serious wound than several diverging 

 ones. In Sir Philip Egerton's museum there is a horn of the red- 

 deer (Cervus elaphus), 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 1699 by Fred- 

 erick I., one of which bears the astonishing number of thirty- 

 three branches and the other twenty-seven, making altogether 

 sixty branches. Richardson figures a pair of antlers of the wild 

 reindeer with twenty-nine points.^' From the manner in which 

 the horns are branched, and more especially from deer being 

 known occasionally to fight together by kicking with their fore- 

 feet,^'' M. Bailly actually comes to the conclusion that their horns 

 are more injurious than useful to them? But this author over- 

 looks the pitched battles between rival males. As I felt much 

 perplexed about the use or advantage of the branches, I applied 

 to Mr. McNeill of Colonsay, who has long and carefully observed 

 the habits of red-deer, and he informs me that he has never seen 

 some of the branches brought into use, but that the brow antlers, 

 from inclining downwards, are a great protection to the forehead, 

 and their points are likewise used in attack. Sir Philip Egerton 

 also informs me both as to red-deer and fallow-deer that, in fight- 

 ing, they suddenly dash together, and getting their horns fixed 

 against each other's bodies, a desperate struggle ensues. When 

 one is at last forced to yield and turn round, the victor endeavors 

 to plunge his brow antlers Into his defeated foe. It thus appears 

 that the upper branches are used chiefly or exclusively for pushing 

 and fencing. Nevertheless in some species the upper branches 

 are used as weapons of offense; when a man was attacked by a 

 wapiti deer (Cervus canadensis) in Judge Caton's park in Ottawa, 



2* On the horns of red-deer, Owen, 'British Fossil Mammals,' 1846, 

 p. -478; Kichardson on the horns of the reindeer, 'Fauna Bor. Ameri- 

 cana,' 1829, p. 240. I am indebted to Prof. "Victor Cams, for the Moritz- 

 burg case. 



=3 Hon. J. D. Caton ('Ottawa Acad, of Nat. Science,' May, 1868, p. 9), 

 saj's that the American deer flght witli their fore-feet, after "the 

 "question of superiority has been once settled and acknowledged in 

 "the herd." Bailly, 'Sur I'usage des Cornes,' 'Annales des Sc. Nat.' 

 torn. ii. 1824, p. 371. 



