Stags’ Heads 97 
struck, if given time to do so. Sir Edmund Loder fired at a stag in Kintail in 1894 ; the 
projectile struck and pierced the left horn just above the coronet, and the animal fell over 
stunned for the moment ; he, however, quickly recovered and was soon out of sight. Four 
or live days afterwards, however, the stag, which had a marked peculiarity and was easily 
recognisable, walked right up to the same sportsman again and was killed. The sides of the 
horn, round the old bullet-hole, were entirely covered with congealed blood. 
In the early part of the season I do not think that, though insensible, the horns are any 
more dead, in the strictest sense of the term, than the winter feathers of wading birds are in 
HEAD OF A STAG TAKEN FROM THE PEAT MOSS AT COMBERMERE, CHESHIRE 
In the possession of the Duke of Westminster. (Prehistoric.) 
the spring, as the American naturalists would have us believe. A certain communication 
still seems to exist through the pedicle with the vital forces, but its effects are not im¬ 
mediately apparent to the eye. When one saws the horns off a deer in the winter, or even 
earlier, we see nothing to induce us to suppose there is any sign of nerves, pulses, or 
traversing fluids. The whole is as hard and dry as a Boer sermon. What one would like 
to see are the horns sawn across in the middle above the tray shortly after completion, and 
left on the head of the stag ; then, I cannot help thinking, we should find something 
exuding. Next season I hope to try some experiments in this line. 
There is no doubt that certain fluids do exist in deer horns for years which are not 
apparent at the time of death. My reader has probably some stags’ heads hanging up on his 
