On Collecting Heads 75 



papered so as to make them white, but this is scarcely a "fake," 

 if natural peat be used as the colouring matter, since it is really 

 only smartening up and cleaning the horns. 



Sometimes shed horns are fitted to the head of an inferior stag 

 which has been stuffed ; this can be detected by turning down the 

 hair at the root of the horn, and seeing if there is a join where 

 the latter has been screwed on to the skull. 



As shed horns, if they have lain for any time, are generally 

 bleached, such a head has almost always to be coloured, as other- 

 wise the faded look of the horns would betray them. 



Broken horns are patched, and a broken point has a new tip 

 put to it ; but this is perhaps legitimate, especially if it is the first 

 head shot by a sportsman, who wants to hang it on his wall, and 

 it has got the point broken by a fall or damaged by a bullet. 



A narrow "head" is widened by the skull being split and a 

 wedge driven in before it is stuffed ; but such false spread is 

 easily detected by experts, the angle of the burrs looking un- 

 natural to anyone accustomed to the horns of that particular species 

 of deer. 



As deer often have more points on one horn than the other, or 

 an altogether better horn on one side than the other, the best horn 

 of each of two different stags (if a right and a left one respec- 

 tively) are sometimes made up on one head, so as to display a lot 

 more points than either stag originally possessed. 



In such case only one horn need be artificially fixed on, the 

 other being stuffed with the head ; or, amongst a lot of shed horns, 

 two may be found which make up a very good head, though they 

 did not originally belong to the same stag. 



