36 THE RED DEER OF EX MOOR. 



The writer has not sufficient experience of Scottish 

 "heads" to answer the first query authoritatively. 

 Some immense heads from the Highlands were 

 shown at the Burlington Gallery some years ago, 

 among which were heads certainly bigger than any 

 Exmoor has produced of late years. But it must be 

 remembered that there are many more stags in 

 Scotland, and that for one old West-country house 

 which has preserved its "heads" over a long series 

 of years there are a hundred or more in Scotland. 



It is to be regretted that at that exhibition there 

 were none of the old heads which grace the walls at 

 Holnicote, Killerton, Castle Hill, Youlston, Water- 

 mouth, and other places where they are preserved. 



Pages and pages of statistics have been published 

 on the subject, but they prove little except that a 

 number of fine heads are in existence. No notice is 

 taken of the medium heads, yet it is by the medium 

 heads, and not by the number of abnormally big 

 heads, that the question of general superiority should 

 be decided. 



The various packs hunting in the West now kill 

 perhaps fifty to sixty stags a year, and a few years 

 ago a score would have represented the average. It 

 would be absurd to expect to find so many big heads 

 as in the North, but the West-country heads taken on 

 an average are, it has been said by many competent 

 judges, better than the average heads in Scotland, 

 though with scarcely so good a spread. 



The record Scotch head of recent years was 



