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Fig. 1.—Indian Wágh-nakh.

Fig. 2.—Wágh-nakh, used by Maráthás (India Museum.)

III. The thrust would be suggested by the combats of the goat, the stag, and black cattle, including the buffalo and the wild bull, all of which charge at speed with the head downwards, and drive the horns into the enemy’s body. The gnu (Catoblepas G.) and other African antelopes, when pressed by the hunter, keep him at bay with the point. In Europe ‘hurt of hart,’ a ripping and tearing thrust, has brought many a man to the grave. The hippopotamus, a dangerous animal unduly despised, dives under the canoe, like the walrus, rises suddenly, and with its lower tusks, of the hardest ivory, drills two holes in the offending bottom. The black rhinoceros, fiercest and most irritable of African fauna, though graminivorous, has one or two horns of wood-like fibre-bundles resting upon the strongly-arched nasal bones, and attached by an extensive apparatus of muscles and tendons. This armature, loose when the beast is at peace, becomes erect and immovable in rage, thus proving in a special manner its only use—that of war. It is a formidable dagger that tears open the elephant and passes through the saddle and its padding into the ribs of a horse. The extinct sabre-toothed tiger (Machairodus latidens), with one incisor and five canines, also killed with a thrust. So, amongst birds, the bittern, the peacock, and the American white crane peck or stab at the eye; the last-named has been known to drive its long sharp mandibles deep into the pursuer’s bowels, and has been caught by presenting to it a gun-muzzle; the bird, mistaking the hole, strikes at it and is caught by the beak.[30] The hern defends herself during flight by presenting the sharp long beak to the falcon. The pheasant and partridge, the domestic cock and quail, to mention no others, use their spurs with a poniard’s thrust; the Argus-pheasant of India, the American Jacaná (Parra), the horned screamer (Palamedea), the wing-wader of Australia (Gregory), and the plover of Central Africa (Denham and Claperton), carry weapons upon their wings.