much more serious wound than several diverging ones. In Sir Philip
Egerton s museum there is a horn of the red-deer (Cervus elaphus),
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 1699 by Frederick I., one of which bears the
astonishing number of thirty-three branches and the other twenty-seven,
making altogether sixty branches. Richardson figures a pair of antlers
of the wild reindeer with twenty-nine points. (24. On the horns of
red-deer, Owen, British Fossil Mammals, 1846, p. 478; Richardson on
the horns of the reindeer, Fauna Bor. Americana, 1829, p. 240. I am
indebted to Prof. Victor Carus, for the Moritzburg case.) From the
manner in which the horns are branched, and more especially from deer
being known occasionally to fight together by kicking with their
fore-feet (25. Hon. J.D. Caton ( Ottawa Acad. of Nat. Science, May
1868, p. 9) says that the American deer fight with their fore-feet,
after the question of superiority has been once settled and
acknowledged in the herd. Bailly, Sur l Usage des cornes, Annales
des Sciences Nat. tom. ii. 1824, p. 371.), M. Bailly actually comes to
the conclusion that their horns are more injurious than useful to them.
But this author overlooks the pitched battles between rival males. As I
felt much perplexed about the use or advantage of the branches, I
applied to Mr. McNeill of Colonsay, who has long and carefully observed
the habits of red-deer, and he informs me that he has never seen some
of the branches brought into use, but that the brow antlers, from
inclining downwards, are a great protection to the forehead, and their
points are likewise used in attack. Sir Philip Egerton also informs me
both as to red-deer and fallow-deer that, in fighting, they suddenly
dash together, and getting their horns fixed against each other s
bodies, a desperate struggle ensues. When one is at last forced to
yield and turn round, the victor endeavours to plunge his brow antlers
into his defeated foe. It thus appears that the upper branches are used
chiefly or exclusively for pushing and fencing. Nevertheless in some
species the upper branches are used as weapons of offence; when a man
was attacked by a wapiti deer (Cervus canadensis) in Judge Caton s park
in Ottawa, and several men tried to rescue him, the stag never raised
his head from the ground; in fact he kept his face almost flat on the
ground, with his nose nearly between his fore feet, except when he
rolled his head to one side to take a new observation preparatory to a
plunge. In this position the ends of the horns were directed against
his adversaries. In rolling his head he necessarily raised it
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