British Deer and their Horns 
5 2 
Eskadale woods, lying sometimes in the corn-fields during the day, but swimming back to 
his island home at night. During a visit to Ailean Aigas early in August 1891, I found 
the fern banks on the top of the island literally covered with his beds, whilst the steep 
descent on either side to the river was worked into regular paths by his hoofs. Of his 
further history I shall have something to say later on. 
The weird, wild, yawning roar of the stag is certainly one of the grandest sounds in 
Nature, and when heard for the first time makes an impression not easily forgotten ; but 
to compare it, as so many do, with the roar of a lion is simply absurd. 1 The voice of the 
lion is immeasurably louder, grander, and farther-reaching, and I think it is due only to 
the natural advantages the stag enjoys in its usual environment of echoing hills and dales 
that this comparison has ever been made. I had a fine opportunity of testing the actual 
power of the lion’s roar in the autumn of 1894, and again in 1895, while staying with my 
people in their Highland home on the hill of Kinnoul, above the fair city of Perth—a city 
which, I may say, lies in a hole surrounded by hills on three sides. To Perth one day 
came Bostock’s menagerie, and with it two splendid lions, who, at intervals during the day, 
did their best to alarm the inhabitants and inform them the show had begun, by an 
exhibition of their vocal powers in full blast. Now a lion’s “best” in the roaring line is 
quite a different thing from the moan or subdued roar one generally hears in the wilds of 
Africa; so here was a chance for finding out how far their voices could be heard, and on 
this quest I presently set out. Mounting to the top of Kinnoul Hill—a distance in a 
bee-line of two miles—I found the sound there loud and strong; then following the line 
of the hills which run parallel to the Tay down the Carse o’ Gowrie, a walk of two miles 
farther brought me to Kinfauns, where the sounds were still loud, and there could be 
no question as to the animals that were emitting them. Another two miles took me to 
Glen Carse, where, as I stood on the station platform, I could distinctly hear the now 
subdued sounds still coming from Perth. Glen Carse is in the flat, and six miles from the 
South Inch of Perth, where the caravans stood ; one may therefore fairly assume that at a 
higher elevation still farther away the roaring could be distinctly heard. In 1895, when 
the menagerie revisited Perth, I again heard the lions roar at a distance of six miles. Now 
I maintain that on a still day no stag in existence could make itself heard so far away, 2 
and I doubt very much whether, amidst the hum and hubbub of the busy city of Perth, 
with its tuneful steam whistles and other factory appliances constantly “ on the go,” its 
roar would reach much (if any) farther than from the rendezvous of the menagerie to the 
top of Kinnoul Hill. 
March and April are the fatal months for deer, for they do not, as a rule, succumb 
during great privations, but afterwards. Extremes of climate affect deer very much. A 
continuously wet season upsets their stomachs, and a very dry one, besides being bad for 
calving, drives them to the mountain-tops, where, though they escape the flies, they find 
only poor and wiry grass, the consumption of which generates inferior heads. This was 
well seen in the wonderful season of 1893. In the favoured region of the Northern forests 
1 It is not perhaps generally known that a stag when suddenly frightened will bark loudly, and will gallop away, continuing 
to bark at intervals. The noise emitted is much louder than that made by the hind. 
2 It is only on very still autumn days that I can hear the stags roaring in Warnham, a distance from my house of two miles. 
