Each male animal uses his weapons in his own peculiar 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. Goats and certain species of sheep, for instance the _Ovis cycloceros_ of Afghanistan,[305] 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 _O. cycloceros_ attacked a large domestic ram, who was a noted bruiser, he conquered him by the sheer novelty of his mode of fighting, always closing at once with his adversary, and catching him across the face and nose with a sharp drawing jerk of his head, and then bounding out of the way before the blow could be returned.” In Pembrokeshire a male goat, the master of a flock which during several generations had run wild, was known to have killed several other males in single combat; this goat possessed enormous horns, measuring 39 inches in a straight line from tip to tip. The common bull, as every one knows, gores and tosses his opponent; but the Italian buffalo is said never to use his horns, he gives a tremendous blow with his convex forehead, and then tramples on his fallen enemy with his knees—an instinct which the common bull does not possess.[306] Hence a dog who pins a buffalo by the nose is immediately crushed. We must, however, remember that the Italian buffalo has long been domesticated, and it is by no means certain that the wild parent-form had similarly shaped horns. Mr. Bartlett informs me that when a female Cape buffalo (_Bubalus caffer_) was turned into an enclosure with a bull of the same species, she attacked him, and he in return pushed her about with great violence. But it was manifest to Mr. Bartlett that had not the bull shewn dignified forbearance, he could easily have killed her by a single lateral thrust with his immense horns. The giraffe uses his short hair-covered horns, which are rather longer in the male than in the female, in a curious manner; for with his long neck he swings his head to either side, almost upside down, with such force, that I have seen a hard plank deeply indented by a single blow. [Illustration: Fig. 61. Oryx leucoryx, male (from the Knowsley Menagerie).]