I I 2 
British Deer and their Horns 
unlovely is a gross libel, for, strange to say, there are one or two parks in England which, on 
account of certain qualities in the soil and feeding, produce heads which are quite as wild 
and Highland in their character as any past or present Scotch heads, which is a very 
remarkable fact. In Lord Ilchester’s park at Melbury in Dorsetshire I saw two stags—a 
12- and a 14-pointer—bearing the most beautiful “ Highland ” heads imaginable. Not only 
were their shapes perfect, but the horns were rough and black, with sharp yellow points. 
All the dropped horns in Melbury present this beautiful dark type, and they are all the 
more remarkable from the fact that there are no peat wallows where the deer can roll and 
A TYPICAL IRISH HEAD (WILD) 
Shot by Lord Castlerosse at Killarney, Co. Kerry, 1894. 
colour their horns. To cite another instance, Colonel Gordon-Cumming at Forres has in 
his smoking-room, hanging next to the big Glenmoriston head, the head of a stag from a 
Lincolnshire park, which might pass muster anywhere for a Scotchman. 
The perfect head of an adult stag in a wild state is one of 12 points. When, however, 
the deer, owing to better feeding and general conditions of life, is obliged to distribute 
his increased mass of osseous matter in some form or other, he does so either by (1) 
greater increase of the beam throughout, although maintaining the original form of 
12 points; (2) palmation in the upper branches; (3) an increased number of branches 
almost invariably on the tops, with smaller points or snags emanating from them ; (4) by 
means of a branch or bifurcation thrown back well up on the posterior margin ; (5) by a 
combination of any of the above variations. 
Descriptions of these various types are unnecessary, as illustrations of them all are given. 
