1 6 THE DEER FORESTS OF SCOTLAND. 



clean without heart or liver, and the average at 

 the end of the season is struck so exactly that ounces 

 are counted, which is the only instance I have met 

 with of such accurate weighing. In many forests 

 small beasts killed by accident are not entered in 

 the deer book, and of course such an omission greatly 

 increases the average of weight. The winter of 

 1893 was one of the worst ever experienced in this 

 forest, and upwards of 140 good stags were found 

 dead, many of them with very fine heads, while as 

 to the young stags that perished, it was not possible 

 to make any estimate, as the horns were all that 

 were left to tell the tale of the fate of their bigger 

 brethren. The stalking season of '94 that followed 

 this severe winter turned out to be one of the driest 

 ever known, and for the greater part of the season the 

 wind blew from the north-east, which is the worst 

 possible one for this forest, and but seventy-four 

 stags were killed, with an average weight of 13 

 stone 10 lbs. io|- ozs., of which the heaviest scaled 

 16 st. 8 lbs., and the lightest n st. 4 lbs. It was 



