44 
plijs^y's natural history. 
[Book XI. 
CHAP. 45. THE VARIOUS KINDS OF HORNS. ANIMALS IN WHICH 
THEr ARE MOVEABLE. 
Horns, too, of various forms have been granted to many 
animals of the aquatic, marine, and reptile kind, but those 
which are more properly understood under that name belong 
to the quadrupeds only ; for I look upon the tales of Actaeon 
and of Cippus even, in Latin story, as nothing more nor less than 
fables.^ 2-nd, indeed, in no department of her works has 
i^ature displayed a greater capriciousness. In providing ani- 
mals with these weapons, she has made m-erry at their ex- 
pense ; for some she has spread them out in branches, the 
stag, for instance ; to others she has given them in a more 
simple form, as in the subulo,'' so called from the resem- 
blance of its horns to a subuia,"^^ or shoemaker's awl. In 
others, again, she has flattened them in the shape of a man's 
hand, with the fingers extended, from which circumstance the 
animal has received the name of platyceros.''^^ To the roe- 
buck she has given branching horns, but small, and has made 
them so as not to fall off and be cast each year ; while to the 
ram she has given them of a contorted and spiral form, as 
though she were providing it with a caestus for offence. The 
horns of the bull, again, are upright and threatening. In this 
last kind, the females, too, are provided with them, while in 
most it is only the males. The chamois has them, curving 
backwards ; while in the fallow deer^® they bend forward. 
The strepsiceros,^^ which in Africa bears the name of addax, has 
horns erect and spiral, grooved and tapering to a sharp point, 
so much so, that you would almost take them to be the sides 
of a lyre.^^* In the oxen of Phrygia, the horns are moveable,*^* 
^5 The suddenness of their appearance, no doubt, was fabulous ; but we 
have well-authenticated cases in recent times of substances growing on the 
human head, to all appearance resembling horns, and arising from a dis- 
ordered secretion of the hair. Witness the case of Mary Davies, a so- 
called horn from whose head is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at 
Oxford. The story of Genucius Cippus, the Eoman praetor, is told by 
Ovid, Met. B. xv. 1. 565, et seq. 
A spitter, or second year stag, according to Cuvier. 
" Broad-horned.** The Cervus dama of Linnaeus. 
^ " Dama." The Antelope redunca of Linnaeus, Cuvier thinks. 
63 No doubt a kind of antelope. 
^* ^'Lyras'* seems preferable to "liras." 
"'^ There are several varieties of oxen, in which the horns adhere to the 
fikin, and not to the cranium. 
