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SEXUAL SELECTION: MAMMALS. 
Part II. 
doing this, he suddenly springs up, throwing up his 
head at the same time, and can thus wound or perhaps 
even transfix his antagonist. Both animals always kneel 
down so as to guard as far as possible against this 
manoeuvre. It has been recorded that one of these 
antelopes has used his horns with effect even against a 
lion ; yet from being forced to place his head between 
the fore-legs in order to bring the points of the horns 
forward, he would generally be under a great dis- 
advantage when attacked by any other animal. It is, 
therefore, not probable that the horns have been modified 
into their present great length and peculiar position, as 
a protection against beasts of prey. We can, however, 
see that as soon as some ancient male progenitor of the 
Oryx acquired moderately long horns, directed a little 
backwards, he would be compelled in his battles with 
rival males to bend his head somewhat inwards or down- 
wards, as is now done by certain stags ; and it is not 
improbable that he might have acquired the habit of 
at first occasionally and afterwards of regularly kneel- 
ing 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 ren- 
dered longer and longer, through sexual selection, until 
they acquired their present extraordinary length and 
position. 
With stags of many kinds the branching of the horns 
offers a curious case of difficulty ; for certainly a single 
straight point would inflict a much more serious wound 
than several diverging points. In Sir Philip Egerton s 
museum there is a horn of the red-deer {Cervus ela- 
plius) 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 
