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 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., each of which bears the astonishing number of thirty-three branches. Richardson figures a pair of antlers of the wild reindeer with twenty-nine points.[307] 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,[308] M. Bailly actually came to the conclusion that their horns were 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 Colinsay, 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 action, 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 in regard both to red-deer and fallow-deer, that when they fight 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 with 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 terminal points of the horns were directed against his adversaries. “In rolling his head he necessarily raised it somewhat, because his antlers were so long that he could not roll his head without raising them on one side, while on the other side they touched the ground.” The stag by this procedure gradually drove the party of rescuers backwards, to a distance of 150 or 200 feet; and the attacked man was killed.[309]