DEVON AND SOMERSET. 281 



top and two similar knobs on the off top. 

 Fourteen inches and a-half seems to be somewhere 

 about the hmit of size for the curve of brow 

 antlers, while seven and a-half inches appears 

 to be the record girth of beam betW'Cen brow 

 and bay antlers. A noble beast, from the 

 Stoodleigh coverts, taken by Mr. Ian Heathcote 

 Amory with the Tiverton Staghounds near Chain 

 Bridge in the autumn of 1897, weighed, when 

 cleaned and dry, no less than 333 lbs ; w^hich, 

 reckoned according to the custom of the country, 

 would amount to 16 score 13 lbs. This I believe 

 to be the record weight, for the West Country 

 at any rate, if not for the British Islands, the 

 Scotch method of weighing being of course 

 entirely different and would have included all 

 that had been removed from this w^oodland 

 giant. This stag's horn measured round outer 

 curve from burr to tip the notable length of 

 395- inches. 



Well matched pairs of shed horns are in 

 great demand, and are frequently worth a 

 bank note to their lucky finders, but as deer 

 frequently carrv one horn longer than the 

 other, and shed it on some feeding ground 

 a mile or two distant from the spot where 

 the first was dropped, the matching of odd 

 horns between the different persons who handle 

 them is a matter of much bargaining, always 

 a slow affair with a hill countrv man. 



