SEVENTH ANNUAL RErORT. 195 



l)y an old doc. while the "sta.c^s," as the hulls are called in Xew- 

 foundland, arc usually found in pairs. Many of the finest stags, 

 however, do not nii.^ratc, hut remain on the hii:;:h harrens of the 

 south. Tlie mii^ratory hahits of the animals have heen greatly 

 disturhed hy the recently completed railroad, along the line of 

 which a cordon of s])ortsmen formerly gathered in the fall, shoot- 

 ing at everything that passed. If this had continued a few years 

 more the result would have been the separation of the caribou 

 into two herds, as was the case of the bufifalo when the Union 

 Pacific Railroad first crossed the United States. 



The velvet is shed during the first week of September, and 

 for some time after the antlers are bright red in color, due not 

 to dried blood, but to the rubbing of the antlers against spruce- 

 trees and alders. 



As a general thing, only those antlers which have a double 

 brow antler count high in points, a point being defined as a knob 

 upon which a watch can be hung. One of the handsomest and 

 most highly prized types of antlers is locally known as the 

 " going-back head," belonging to old stags on the decline ; the 

 beam is extremely massive, and the points short and numerous. 

 Antlers with thirty points are considered to form a good head. 

 Forty points are rare, and the days of the fifty-pointers appear 

 to have passed, even if they ever existed. In the future the 

 finer antlers will become increasingly rare, as one of the first 

 symptoms of the decline of any given race of deer is the deterio- 

 ration of antlers. In proof of this, witness the increasing scarcity 

 of handsome wapiti heads. This also holds good of the moose 

 of Maine and New Brunswick, where the best heads scarcely 

 equal the average of those taken along the Upper Ottawa River. 

 The antlers of the Scottish red deer are as inferior to those taken 

 in the German forest as the latter are in turn inferior to Hun- 

 garian antlers from the same species. In all those countries, 

 collections of antlers dating back several centuries show a tre- 

 mendous decline in the best heads. Antlers in the castle of 

 Moritzberg, near Dresden, dating from the sixteenth and seven- 

 teenth centuries, are so large that it is difficult to believe that the 

 animals which bore them were of the same species as their de- 

 generate descendants in the neighboring forests. This deteriora- 

 tion is chiefly brought about by long-continued elimination of the 

 best stags, but too close inbreeding has probably aided the gen- 

 eral decline. 



