NEW ZEALAND RED DEER 97 



tops. There is no sign of a cup, indeed a cup is 

 very rare in Otago heads, and it is with regard to this 

 point that I differ with Mr. E. Hardcastle, when he 

 says that the Otago deer perpetuate the true Scottish 

 type. The left bay point is a little weak, but the 

 horns otherwise a nearly perfect match. At any 

 rate, it is as nearly the perfect normal head of a 

 wild stag as one can expect to find in this wicked 

 world. 



A royal killed by Mr. Melville Gray was also 

 a beautiful head, very much of the same type as 

 the former, though with a slight falling-off in the 

 brows and bays ; again, there were no cups. On 

 these Otago heads I noticed that sometimes there was 

 an attempt at a cup on one side, but two really well- 

 developed cups, as one sees in a good Scottish head, 

 were extremely rare. Indeed I never saw such a 

 head. Mr. C. D. Hodgkinson exhibited a very fine 

 14-pointer, and these three heads would be hard 

 to beat. 



There were, however, some other good heads, in- 

 cluding a royal killed by Mr. Hardcastle, perhaps the 

 prettiest head of the lot, and a 16-pointer killed by 

 Mr. W. Allan at 500 yards with a Snider carbine and 

 no fore-sight. A fluke is a hard thing to define, but 

 for a concrete example this would take a lot of 

 beating ! 



I have alluded to some heads obtained in the 

 Eakaia Gorge, Canterbury. Ten years ago the 



Canterbury Acclimatisation Society obtained some 



G 



