274 STAG-HUNTING 



not often grow many points. Eighteen and nineteen 

 points are on record, twice in 1786, and again in 

 1871, but I know of very few heads with four or more 

 points on top of both sides, and all the * rights ' the 

 venerable term for the three lower antlers, which has 

 survived with us from the fourteenth century. There 

 were only two such among the hundred and fifty 

 stags killed in my mastership. Heads of twelve 

 points are common enough, and that with all the 

 tines of good length, but the extra development 

 seems to tend as a rule, not to the multiplication of 

 points, but rather to increased length and weight in 

 the beam, and especially in the brow antlers, which 

 are often over a foot long, and sometimes reach 

 fifteen inches. The bez, or bay antler, the royal 

 antler of the old books, the next above the brow, is 

 frequently quite short, and is often wanting altogether. 

 Once only have I seen a bay antler growing from 

 the back of the horn instead of the front. This was 

 on the head of a fine stag that we killed from Haddon 

 on September 19, 1884 ; the formation is common, 

 however, in the wapiti. I have never seen or heard of 

 but three heads with only brow antlers and two on top, 

 like a sambhur one killed in 1799, theothersin 1883 

 and 1895 > tne nrst an ld stag, the second a three- 

 year-old, the last a full-grown stag with a broken leg. 



