124 STAG-HUNTING ON EXMOOR. 



with the same result on the side where the mutilation 

 is effected, but this is not asserted by experience. 



In consequence of this dictum of Dr. CoUyns's, there 

 used never to be a one-horned deer killed in the West 

 but injury in the region above specified was assigned 

 as the cause. In one case there was certainly the coinci- 

 dence, but Mr. Bisset's records overset the theory alto- 

 gether. One-horned deer are by no means uncommon 

 on Exmoor. Mr. Bisset killed at least seven in the 

 course of his mastership, three of them, curiously 

 enough, in three successive weeks of 1873. Of these 

 seven, three had evidently had the missing horn torn 

 off; and here the writer may perhaps be allowed to put 

 forward the opinion that if a horn be broken or torn 

 off during the early velvet stage, the stump remaining 

 is most likely to become one with the knob of bone on 

 which the horn is fixed, and never be shed again. If a 

 horn be broken off above the burr after the velvet is 

 cast, the stump is shed as if the horn were entire. But 

 in no one of the seven or more one-horned deer does 

 Mr. Bisset mention any defect in the testes, and he 

 frequently speaks of Dr. CoUyns's theory as exploded. 

 Two one-horned deer killed by the present master also 

 showed no such imperfection ; and though one had a 

 short stump of white bone on the site of the missing 



