Stags’ Heads 89 
I find that all sportsmen when measuring the length of a head include the coronet, the 
tape being taken from the bottom edge of the coronet up into the dip of the horn and 
following the outside curve in the usual way, and Mr. Ward does the same. 
If a sportsman sends the measurements of a stag’s head, stating length of horn out¬ 
side curve, span inside and over all, beam above brow point, tip to tip, number of points, 
and a few words on any special feature of the head, I think one can make a fair guess as 
to its quality, for the beam of a stag’s head is generally maintained upward with only a 
slight falling away between the tray and the cup. 
Every man dislikes being educated, especially on a subject on which he has already 
formed his own opinion, so I shall not try to do any such thing, but only offer to my readers 
what I consider the very best examples in this country ot British deer heads grown under all 
conditions of life. The remarks upon them are simply my own views of their respective 
merits, so that the reader may accept or discard them as he thinks fit. The one point 
which I would, however, emphasise is that I have conscientiously endeavoured to do my 
work without partiality, favour, or affection, and that he here will, for the first time, see a 
large collection of the best British heads all measured to one standard, and for the most part 
by one man. 
As in the judging of pictures, no two opinions are, after all, alike, and there the matter 
will rest, in spite of columns of print ; but that there is such a thing as the best head of every 
species is undeniable. 
Many of my readers will recollect the splendid show of hunting trophies at the 
American Exhibition in 1887. There it was unanimously agreed by experts and the judges 
that Mr. Tulloch’s 20-point wapiti head was the finest of its kind in the room, and, we 
might well add, anywhere else in the world. What were the qualities of this peerless head ? 
1, Perfect symmetry ; 2, great beam or thickness ; 3, a large number of points (for a wapiti), 
all perfectly balanced, as sharp as needles; and last, but not least, the horns were of that 
beautiful hard beaded and rough quality without which a head seldom reaches any degree of 
perfection. Now that wapiti head is simply ideal, just as we now make Sir Edwin Landseer’s 
“ Monarch of the Glen ” our ideal of a Highland head. 
I think heads should be judged in the above order of qualifications, the first point, 
that of beauty of form, being by far the most important, for a great big head seems to lose 
more than half its claims to excellence unless it is set in the natural and artistic lines of 
beauty which appeal directly to the eye. 
Now let us look at horns and what they are. Tom Hood, with his usual fun, says, 
“ Look at the stag with his stately antlers; he can produce a perfect flourish of horns, 
like some clever musician, thoroughly original, and all out of his own head.” 
To be more prosaic, horns are described as “appendages” which grow from the surface 
of the head of certain mammals of the order Ungulata , and are used as weapons of offence and 
defence, and are mainly protective in their origin. It is one of the instances of the exception 
to Darwin’s theory of sexual selection which would seem to prove the rule. The great scientist, 
as Mr. Allan Gordon Cameron has pointed out, assumes, against the evidence, that superiority 
in the lethal weapon secures mastership of the harem in the test of battle between rival males, 
and he also assumes that absence of the lethal weapon is fatal to success in war. The real 
