36 CHASE OF THE WILD RED DEER 



A stag with these points, if he have all his rights, 

 brow, bay, and tray, would be called a stag of 

 twelve. In parts of Germany, I believe, where the 

 red deer are more numerous and better preserved 

 than in our country, there are stags with larger 

 beams and more points to be found than any we 

 are accustomed to see at the present day. A stag 

 of 'sixteen,' however, seems to have been considered 

 cerznis eximius by that mighty hunter William III. ; 

 for, in a letter to Bentinck written from Loo in 

 October 1697, l"*^ says — 'Nous avons pris deux 

 gros cerfs. le premier dans Dorewaert, qui est un 

 des plus gros que je sache avoir jamais pris. — // 

 porte seize! * 



These wonderful developments, the horns, are 

 shed or mewed every year. From the time when 

 the horn drops off to that when the new horn 

 reaches its full growth, is a period of from sixteen to 

 eighteen weeks ; and when we consider that the 

 horns of an old stag will sometimes weigh as much 

 as fourteen or fifteen pounds, we may well wonder 

 how such a mass of bony substance can be repro- 



.* I cite this from Macaulay's History of England, vol. ii., p. 169, 

 note (or for easier reference, in view of recent editions, the note is to 

 be found in the early part of Chapter VII.). William III. evidently 

 preferred the hunting at Loo to that of Windsor, to which Macaulay 

 quotes him alluding as ' tv vilain pays? 



