THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
and have already (in “The Mammals of Great Britain and Ireland,” 
pp. 104-105) given my reasons for thinking so. Briefly, they are as follows. 
I examined the head on the day it arrived at Mr Macleay’s shop in Inver- 
ness. The head was that of a stag in a state of decline; most of the back 
teeth were gone, and the horns could not have weighed more than 3 lb. On 
Lord Burton’s statement that it was a genuine “wild” stag I inserted a 
picture and description of it in “ British Deer and their Horns,” but shortly 
afterwards I met the Earl of Ilchester, who laughed at the idea that it 
was in any way a Scottish stag. In fact he had himself sent Stoke Park 
stags to Glenquoich as they were too dangerous to keep in his park at 
Melbury. I published these facts, not in any way to impugn Lord Burton’s 
good faith, for doubtless he believed it was a wild stag when he shot it, 
but so as to keep the records of Highland stags as clean as possible. 
It is, however, certain that the stalkers knew the stag in question, and 
that it was one of those sent from Melbury turned loose in the forest, 
and that they did not mention the fact when it was killed.* 
An eighteen -point head was killed in 1890, and another in 1902. Lady 
Breadalbane killed a seventeen -pointer a few years ago at Black Mount, 
and in 1912 Mr Benson killed a seventeen -pointer at Kilillan, but the 
horns were very short, only 29 ^ inches. 
Heads with points more than fourteen are very rare, only two, or at 
the most three, being killed in any one season. 
Hummel, or hornless, stags are now very common in Scotland. Those 
with a single horn of only one long point are exceedingly rare. I have seen 
two such Scottish heads, one of which is in the smoking-room at Black 
Mount. A head of this description (figured in “Country Life,” Dec. 21, 
1912) was from a stag killed by the Devon and Somerset hounds in the 
autumn of 1912, and is the only example of such a head known in England. 
Single horns with two and three points are, however, common. ExampU 
of Red deer interlocking the horns, and so dying of starvation, are exceed- 
ingly rare, and I know of only one British example amongst Red deer. 
These two heads, locked together, hang in the library at Gordon Castle, 
and are figured in “ British Deer and their Horns ” (p. 139). Of their his- 
tory, the Duke of Richmond and Gordon kindly sends me the following 
note: “Landseer was a frequent visitor to Gordon Castle, and was much 
interested in the interlocked heads hanging in the library, and from the 
“Recently a correspondence on the subject of this head has appeared in Country Life, and the fact that Stoke 
Park stags were sent from Melbury Park to Glenquoich was proved, 
56 
