100 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



" As I shot nothing under four years old, or any wretched old 

 brute, of which we had but too many, these averages give a 

 correct idea of the size of Lewis stags. I noticed one very striking 

 peculiarity, their immense craving for bones and old deers-horns. 

 My predecessor shot an old horse a few days before he left in May, 

 about two miles from the lodge. When I arrived in August, the 

 Deer were coming nightly to chew the bones, and all the latter 

 had disappeared before I left in November of the same year. 



"I have often, when lying watching a herd, seen the hinds chew- 

 ing the horns of a stag lying on the ground, and that this was a 

 common practice was shown by the marks of their teeth on almost 

 every stag I killed late in the season. I never saw signs of any- 

 thing of the kind on the 50 stags I have since shot on the mainland. 



" The heads of the Lews Deer are very pretty, though small, 

 having generally more points than mainland Deer. I generally 

 killed two, sometimes three Royals in a year, and " 11-pointers" 

 were very common. 



" The cause of the deterioration in the Lewis and Harris Deer I 

 attribute to overstocking, not to their being overshot so much. 

 Doubtless, there, as elsewhere, though nothing like to the same 

 extent, the killing-off of the finest stags and hinds is telling; but I 

 believe it is mainly owing to the poor feeding on ground unable to 

 carry the vast numbers of Deer in the Harris and Lewis forests. 

 The number of the hinds was far too great, as Sir James Matheson 

 was opposed to their being shot down. If the severe winter has 

 killed off the half of them, it will have done great good." So much 

 for Mr Williamson's interesting observations and conclusions, with 

 which, I am sure, all who have studied the subject as thoroughly 

 as he has done must agree. 



In Harris, in 1870, I saw plenty of Deer. As already shown 

 by Mr. Williamson, the stags are not usually large, nor 

 approaching in size those of certain forests on the mainland. In 

 one lot, however, there was one immense brute, as compared with 

 the others. With a powerful glass — " Lord Bury Telescope " — I 

 could make out one Hoyal head in the same lot, and another with 

 8 points. The horns, though usually small, are seldom distorted. 

 This I learned from an inspection of many heads at Fin-castle, and 

 the shooting lodges, and from the information of the foresters, in 

 whose company I passed several days during my search for Eagles' 

 eyries. 



