THE RED-DEER OF EXMOOR. 85 



that it is not so easy to find a pair of dropped antlers as might be 

 imagined. Many of the horns sold are odd antlers dropped by 

 different stags ; these are fitted together, and generally to a hind's 

 head. The stag's head is generally claimed by the master of the 

 hounds, consequently few genuine heads of the red stag come into 

 the market. The weight of the stag varies : tweve score is a good 

 weight ; some are not more than nine, but the huntsman has 

 killed at fourteen score or 280 pounds. 



On the subject of the food of Eed-deer Mr. Jefferies has 

 much to tell us. They will have the best of everything, he says, 

 and roaming about at night select the meadow with the most 

 succulent grass. They enter orchards, too, in spring, for the 

 long grass that grows between the apple-trees, and again in 

 autumn for the apples, of which they are very fond. Turnips are 

 a favourite food, and leaving the moors they wander miles down 

 into the cultivated fields to find them. The stag, as he walks 

 across the turnip-field, bites a turnip, draws it from the ground, 

 throws it over his shoulders, the jerk detaching the fragment he 

 holds between his teeth, and which is the only portion he touches. 

 He takes but one bite at each turnip, casting the remainder aside 

 in this way, and his course can be traced from one side of the 

 field to the other by the turnips pulled and thrown away after his 

 snatch. In this disdainful manner he damages far more than he 

 actually eats. Hinds eat the turnip down to the ground as a 

 sheep would. 



A herd of stags getting into a turnip-field will eat broad 

 patches and paths about it. In a small field they may destroy 

 every root. Potatoes they are very fond of, and get at them by 

 sweeping away the earth with their fore feet. Carrots, too, attract 

 them, and cabbages. They will strij) a garden of cabbages in no 

 time as clean as possible. But perhaps the greatest injmy is done 

 to wheat. Deer visit the wheat-fields at two seasons. They come 

 as soon as the green leaf shoots up, and nibble it, and are 

 especially fond of it just before the ear appears, when it is full of 

 succulent juice. They return again when the ears are ripe, and 

 lying down in the daytime, when the wheat at its height conceals 

 them, they will eat and destroy many pounds' worth of grain 

 before they are discovered and driven away. 



The damage they do to crops is so extensive that without the 

 goodwill of the farmers, stag-hunting could not last a single 



