336 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FOREST 



his casual excavations in the mosses, even in the unlikely 

 event of the best heads having chanced to be entombed in 

 the bogs. Yet what do we find ? 



In the days when the wild creatures of the forest 

 wandered over the site of modern Edinburgh, a great Stag 

 came to drink at the waters of the Loch which then covered 

 "the Meadows" of the present day. The banks of the loch 

 were peaty, and underneath the peat lay treacherous beds of 

 marl in which the Deer became entrapped and, unable to 

 free itself, died a miserable death. In 1781 the head and 

 horns of this Stag were dug up below the roots of an old 

 tree. It was probably no exceptional creature in its own 

 generation, yet to-day it stands out as a giant, a seventeen 

 pointer a Great Hart summed of seventeen. The antlers 

 were large, the right 3 feet in length, bearing nine points 

 and ending in a cup-like expansion, or sur-royal, surrounded 

 by six points ; the left antler, 46 inches long, carried eight 

 points with a fine sur-royal of five large "croches." The 

 circumference of the beam above the second or bez-tine 

 measured 8J inches (Fig. 57, p. 335). 



But, as I have said, the Great Hart of the Meadows 

 was no exceptional Stag. During the draining of Linton 

 Loch in Roxburghshire, the entire skeleton of a Red Deer 

 was discovered, deep in a marl bed which itself lay under 

 i o feet of peat, and although the bones were broken up by the 

 workpeople the head and antlers were preserved. They are 

 those of a " Great Hart summed of nineteen." Both antlers 

 measured 33 inches, and their span from tip to tip, 44 inches. 

 The skull was 20 inches in length along the profile and 

 7-J inches across the forehead. Even this fine head cannot 

 compare with another Roxburgh example found at Ashkirk, 

 which bore two magnificent antlers carrying a total of twenty- 

 one points. 



The antlers of a very fair Royal, a twelve pointer, of the 

 present day, would measure several inches under three feet 

 along the outside of the curve, would have a spread of some 

 2\ ft, and a circumference of \\ to 5 inches as against the 

 8| inches of the Great Hart of the Meadows. 



Moreover in size of body the old Scottish Red Deer far 

 surpassed its modern representatives. There is exhibited in 

 the Royal Scottish Museum a complete skeleton found about 



