G. P. Hughes — The Red- Deer in Northumherland. 121 



frequently engage in the most desperate encoianters, and sometimes 

 the antlers are inextricably fixed by the tines, both animals being 

 left to perish with interlocked weapons. 



" As when two bulls for their fair female fight, 

 Their dewlaps gored, their sides all smeared in blood." 



Virgil: ^neid, xii, 715. 



Antlers of Red-Deer, Cervus elaphus, Linn. 



Found by G. P. Hughes, Esq., beneath a peat deposit, Cresswell Bog, eastern base of 

 the Cheviot Hills ; and preserved at Middleton Hall, Northumberland. 



The specimen of which I submit a photograph is, I have reason 

 to believe, hardly surpassed for size and preservation by any other 

 examples from the peat deposits of Great Britain. The late Earl of 

 Malmesbnry, who was for many years tenant of the Auchnacary 

 deer forest in Scotland, and moved among sportsmen of the first 

 rank at home and abroad, saw these antlers, in company with 

 another great sportsman and deerstalker and intimate friend of 

 Sir E. Landseer, the Earl of Tankerville, and was of opinion that 

 only in a few German collections iu Hesse Cassel, etc., on the sites of 



