96 British Deer and their Horns 
lay down, but that might have been from dejection or headache, as I could see no wound on him when I 
put him up ; but anyhow, as far as I am concerned, I feel that Sir Edwin Landseer is avenged on his 
critics.— W. H. Grenfell (Loch Assynt Lodge, Sutherland, 14th October). 
Shortly afterwards Mr. Grenfell sent the piece of horn up to the Field office, and Mr. 
J. E. Harting and I examined it closely. There was not the very least doubt that there had 
The lower figure, found in Derbyshire, 1780, and now in the Natural History Museum, London, is probably the widest stag’s head that has been unearthed 
in Great Britain. The left top branch is missing, and were it placed at a normal angle like the right horn, the extreme span could scarcely have been less than 
60 inches, a quite unusual figure even for a wapiti. (Prehistoric.) 
recently been a quantity of dark liquid, resembling blood, in the pores of the horn itself, and 
which had afterwards become dried in the horn in a congealed mass. This certainly goes 
against popular belief that when the horn of a deer is once formed it is so much dead matter, 
through which no life permeates, but I have always believed that a certain amount of oily 
matter still existed in deer horns years and years after the animal has been shot and is 
hanging as a trophy on the walls, and I believe that almost any stag that is shot through the 
horn in the early part of the season, that is to say soon after the head is complete, would 
gather congealed blood, or something resembling it, round the parts where the bullet has 
