THE NEWFOUNDLAND CARIBOU 317 



head belonging to Mr. Ryan, a very large example possessed 

 by the Hon. John Harvey, and a good forty-seven pointer 

 in the possession of the Raid Newfoundland Company, I 

 have not seen anything exceptional. This absence of fine 

 deer-heads in the capital of the island can be accounted for 

 by the fact that the great fire destroyed most of the best 

 trophies, whilst travelling Americans give large prices for 

 any head of remarkable beauty. My friend, Mr. Hesketh 

 Prichard, picked up on the Gander in 1906 a very fine pair 

 of horns with forty-nine points. These are very short, but 

 possess magnificent brows. 



Horns in which the bays are placed low down and close 

 to the brows, as in Norwegian reindeer, are very rare, 

 and I have only seen two examples, whilst equally scarce 

 are horns which carry supernumerary points in the centre 

 of the beam between the bays and the tops, of which I give 

 two figures. Dwarf, or what we may term withered, heads 

 are also somewhat unusual, and are usually carried by very 

 large stags. Hornless stags, too, are not so rare as they 

 are supposed to be. 



For the purpose of comparison with other local races 

 of reindeer, I give the measurements of the twelve best 

 specimens of Newfoundland caribou which I have obtained 

 in the island. In all scientific accounts dealing with the 

 measurements of reindeer horns, no notice is taken of the 

 size of the large brow shovel, a matter of great importance 

 in determining the respective merits of individual heads. 

 Mere length of horn is not everything in judging the 

 qualifications of deer-heads, whilst in this species in par- 

 ticular we must consider beam, span, number of points,^ 



' The points of reindeer are difficult to count. No point should be included 

 that does not fulfil the old watch-guard or powder-horn test, unless it may be a clean 



