56 DEER-STALKING. 



will have a much heavier body and finer and larger 

 horns than if killed earlier. In some parts of the 

 Highlands, so great is the admiration of the foresters for 

 a royal, that they will approach the dead monarch with 

 uncovered heads ! The extraordinary rapid growth of 

 the horn is one of the most remarkable features of stag 

 life. Usually shed some time in the month of March, 

 by the end of July they are again fully grown, though 

 still covered with velvet. In about four months a 

 heavy healthy stag will shoot out some seventy inches 

 of horns or fully four inches a week ! 



" That's the crop that thrives best in these parts," a 

 forester once sadly observed to me, the while turning 

 his eyes woefully from his own small crop of ungrown 

 oats to a herd of deer we had been looking at one 

 August day. During August, or the early part of 

 September depending entirely on the clemency or 

 reverse of the season, the velvet will be shed and 

 the horns appear in all their rough and wild-shaped 

 beauty. 



The engraving annexed is the head of a wild red 

 deer, shot in Lord Dunmore's forest in Harris, by my 

 old friend, the late Herbert Wood of Raasay. A 

 grand head and a fourteen pointer : if his lordship has 

 many like this one to be seen in his forest he is indeed 

 a lucky man ; but the head is so unusually large for 

 that part of Scotland, that I cannot help thinking this 

 stag must have been up to a trick or two, and knew 

 where he could go to get good and plenteous food all 

 the winter. There is, however, no reason why every 

 forest in Scotland should not annually produce a dozen 



