The Maral Stag 233 



ugly thorns for Mahommed was as bad as a 

 faint-hearted spaniel when it came to thorns 

 and he did not like to go back on his pro- 

 nouncement afterwards. 



Antlers from this part of Persia vary a good 

 deal in weight, shape, and colour. The spotted 

 skull-cap man told me he had seen a head with 

 thirty points, but " long ago." It is certain that 

 no such skulls are to be got now. I personally 

 have never seen anything better than a skull with 

 seventeen points evidently a picked - up speci- 

 men that was in the customs house at Astra- 

 bad. 1 With these deer, the bay tine seems 

 invariably to be present, but the amount of 

 palmation and the arrangement of the tops seems 

 to vary a good deal. The old man talked of a 

 cup he had seen that was developed enough to 

 hold water, but I should say that the majority 

 of tops are branched rather than cupped. None 

 of my native acquaintances in these parts had 

 ever so much as heard of a hummel. 



As to colour, dark antlers are the most common, 



1 I have seen some skulls of a rather different type, with thinner 

 antlers, that were reported to come from the long, queer-shaped 

 spit of land that runs into the Caspian by Ashuradeh. Some time 

 ago they used to have tremendous deer-drives on this peninsula, 

 which rather lends itself to that form of slaughter. I have been 

 told that deer are still to be found there, though the density of the 

 bush would make shooting difficult. 



