260 ANTLERS 



retain a beautiful yellow or fawn colour. Before 

 Austrian supplies had practically ousted British oak 

 from the market, it was well worth considerable labour 

 to recover such of these ancient trees as became par- 

 tially exposed through the action of the tides. Simple 

 means were adopted to extract them from the mud. 

 Empty barrels were attached to a log at low tide ; 

 when the tide rose the barrels rose also, slowly but 

 surely drawing the tree from the place where it had 

 lain for, perhaps, thousands of years. It was a com- 

 mon thing that during this operation the remains of 

 immense red deer were brought to light, relics of the 

 herds which no longer roam over the southern upland. 1 

 Two horns recovered in this manner are before me as 

 I write. They are not a pair ; one is a live horn with 

 part of the skull attached ; it measures 37 inches 

 along the outer curve, and 7^ inches in circumference 

 between brow and bay, and has seven points. The 

 other is a cast horn with six points remaining, the 

 brow tine having been broken off. It is 38 inches 

 long, and 7| inches round the horn between brow and 



1 According to local tradition the last -wild red stag killed in the 

 Galloway Hills fell to the minister of Kirkinner towards the close of 

 the eighteenth century. After the 9th Earl of Galloway acquired 

 the lauds of Cumloden in 1827, he enclosed a wide tract of hill and 

 dale, and stocked it with red and fallow deer. In the good shelter 

 of this chace, the stags bear horns which would put average modern 

 Highland heads to shame. In a deer drive at Cumloden I was 

 ensconced under a stone dyke in company \vith a fair lady. I saw 

 about half a mile off a very large stag making straight for my lair, 

 and told my companion of it. She rose to look over the wall ; a 

 large blue bow in her headgear flapped in the wind ; my stag 

 promptly altered his course, and fell to a neighbouring rifle. His 

 head was an imperial fourteen points. 



