Chap. XVII. 
LAW OF BATTLE, 
249 
in attacking the tiger ; according to Bruce, he scores 
the trunks of trees until they can be easily thrown 
down, and he likewise thus extracts the farinaceous 
cores of palms ; in Africa he often uses one tusk, this 
being always the same, to probe the ground and thus 
to ascertain whether it will bear his weight. The 
common bull defends the herd with his horns ; and 
the elk in Sweden has been known, according to Lloyd, 
to strike a wolf dead with a 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 segagrus) of the 
Himalayas, and as it is said with the ibex, namely, that 
when the male accidentally falls from a height he 
bends inwards his head, and, by alighting on his mas- 
sive 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 uses 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. Gloats and certain species of sheep, for instauce 
the Ovis cydoceros 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 with a sabre. When the 0, cydoceros 
attacked a large domestic ram, w^ho was a noted 
bruiser, he conquered him by the sheer novelty of his 
‘ Calcutta Journal of Nat. Hist.’ Yol. ii. 1843, p. 526. 
Mr. Blyth, in ‘Land and Water,’ March, 1867, p. 134, on the 
fiuthority of Capt. Hutton and others. For the wild Pembrokeshire 
goats see the ‘ Field,’ 1869, p. 150. 
