THE HORNS ANt) ANTLERS OF RUMINANTS. 247 



Gemsbuck it will commit terrible havoc amongst a pack of dogs — 

 indeed, I have known one to kill three with three consecutive 

 sweeps of its long scimitar-shaped horns."* Further illustration 

 of a defensive purpose will be found in the (historically) later, 

 and more familiar, bovine types which include the wild and 

 domesticated sheep and oxen. From the unimpaired fighting 

 ability of hornless breeds we have already seen reason to infer 

 that, in sexual combat dependent on a clash of foreheads, laterally 

 spreading horns are of small account; but sufficient proof of their 

 service as defensive weapons appears in the single fact that the 

 Buffaloes of Asia and Africa are a match for the largest felines of 

 their respective continents. 



These facts unavoidably prompt the question whether the 

 horns and antlers of ruminants are not the biological answer to 

 carnivorous teeth and claws — evoked by the necessities of race- 

 preservation in the struggle for life, and fashioned by natural 

 selection so as to unite comparative immunity in sexual warfare 

 with fatal efficiency against common foes ? In this double pur- 

 pose working to the one result, protective adaptation, may we not 

 read the secret of the form and development of frontal weapons 

 from the simplest to the most complex ? and may we not thus 

 account for the apparently anomalous fact, that weapons which 

 are dangerously effective in regard to the external enemies of a 

 species, become relatively innocuous in the strife of its fellow- 

 members one with another ? I believe the facts authorise an 

 affirmative answer to these questions, and I propose to consider 

 them in three respects, historical, structural, and sexual, in the 

 order named. Assuming that horns and antlers are the result 

 of a protective adjustment consequent upon the mutual relations 

 subsisting between ungulates and carnivores through Tertiary 

 time, it becomes of primary importance to inquire how far the 

 history of these relations corresponds with the requirements of 

 our theory. We shall then be in a position to consider, in the 

 second place, the type or style of weapon as a structural adapta- 



* The defensive powers of the larger Antelopes have recently been made 

 a subject of remark by Count Teleki (on the Eland), Mr. F. J. Jackson (on 

 the Oryx), and Mr. K. A. Bryden (on the Gnu). A notable instance will be 

 found in Mr. Selous's fascinating book on 'Travel and Adventure in S.E. 

 Africa,' p. 190. 



