THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
This, in some cases, sets hard and sheds its velvet. I have seen four British 
Roe heads of this description, and when well developed they are certainly 
very handsome. 
Good collections of British Roe heads are in the possession of Sir H. 
Gore-Booth (Lissadell), Sir J. Macpherson Grant (Ballindalloch), Mr C. M. 
Burn, Mr Sydney Steel, Sir Arthur Grant (Monymusk), the Duke of Rich- 
mond and Gordon (Gordon Castle), Lord Lovat (Beaufort, and Aileen 
Aigas), Sir Wm Gordon -Gumming (Altyre), the Earl of Mansfield (Scone), 
Mr Mansell Pleydell (Whatcombe), Mr H. M. Warrand, Mr Cameron 
(Moniach), and myself. 
The best roebucks of Dorset carry very good heads, and those introduced 
from Dorset to Vaynol by the late Mr Assheton Smith also produced 
fine horns. A good example is in the Bangor Museum. Horns with 
more than seven points are rare. I have one with ten points, found dead 
at Kiltarlty, Beaufort; two with eight points from Perthshire, and there 
is one with a similar number in the Gordon Castle collection. Mr C. Dyson 
Perrins has a head, from near Ar dross, with no fewer than twelve small 
points, the same number as the Lissadell “ royal.” Female Roe with small 
horns are by no means uncommon, and I have seen over twenty examples: 
such abnormalities as females with more or less complete horns are 
however very rare. 
In “The Zoologist” for 1884 (pp. 351-366) is an article on Roe deer 
heads by Mr J. E. Harting, illustrated with figures of a dozen very re- 
markable ones. These were drawn and engraved by G. E. Lodge from 
specimens selected from a large collection forwarded to London for sale 
by Dr Leo von Klipstein, of Giessen, in October, 1883. Amongst other 
singular abnormalities Fig. 10 shows two pairs of horns springing from 
the same skull, one pair directly above the other, and both fairly sym- 
metrical. Fig. 11 shows a coalescence of the burrs of what should have 
been two independent horns, and a union of the two beams into one in the 
centre of the forehead, with a subsequent bifurcation and development of 
a single tine on each prong of the fork. 
The heaviest Scottish horns are usually from nine to nine and a half 
inches long. The average weight of skull and horns without the lower jaw 
is 11 oz.; but an exceptionally massive head of a Roe shot by my father 
at Trinity Gask (Perthshire) weighs 21 oz., whilst the Lissadell twelve- 
pointer must be several ounces heavier, and is as massive as any head I 
saw in the Vienna Exhibition of 1910. 
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