230 THE DEER OF AMERICA. 
nearly resemble those from the Acapulco deer, while they resem- 
ble the first in most of their characteristics, except that the long 
tine is now reduced to a snag scarcely more than an inch long, 
and the left antler is more flattened at the end. These are more 
fully considered under the title ‘¢ Analogues.” 
Mr. Darwin, the distinguished naturalist, when preparing his 
celebrated work, ‘‘ The Descent of Man,” for the press, asked me 
for ‘my observations as to the utility to the animal of the 
branched forms of the antlers of the Cervide. This is a question 
certainly not easily solved, and yet the mode of warfare of these 
animals may serve to throw some light on the subject. 
The mode of joining battle, as we shall see in another place, 
with all the cervine species, is with a tremendous rush together. 
Some species fall back and repeat the rush many times, like the 
ram, while others, after they thus meet continue pressing and 
worrying each other, maneuvering to break each other’s foil. 
Now if the antlers on each presented but single points, death to _ 
one or both the combatants would almest surely ensue upon the 
first collision, and thus would the species soon become extermi- 
nated. 
There was in the fall of 1875, in Lincoln Park, a Virginia 
buck five years old, whose left antler was a spike about ten 
inches long with a largely developed basal snag, while the right 
antler was of the ordinary form and size. The keeper informed 
me that this buck had killed the two others in the same enclos- 
ure, the last but the day before my visit, and that it was this 
sharp, straight spike which did the mischief. Always before, the 
antlers of this buck had been. of the ordinary form and size, with 
which he had never injured the other deer. He thought the sin- 
gular growth was due to an injury to the antler in the early 
stage of its growth. 
The many branches with which the antler of the deer is pro- 
vided, undoubtedly impair its efficiency as a weapon of attack, 
but they convert it into a shield which effectually foils the blow 
from a similar weapon, though it may not certainly ward off a 
blow from a single shaft. I have never yet known an instance, 
except in the case of the spike antler, in which either combatant 
received a wound in these sudden onsets. The battle is won by 
persistent endurance, or by some accident or want of skill or 
agility which exposes one to the reach of the other. If the 
branched antler is a disadvantage to the individual, there can 
