Roe-Stalking and Roe Heads 209 
not apply, for in the collections of the late Seaforth and Roualeyn Gordon-Cumming (the 
great collectors of roe heads in their day) there were no examples better than recently-killed 
heads now in collections which are here illustrated. 
The best roe heads now found are grown by animals inhabiting districts within 15 
miles of Perth, Beauly, and Forres. I give an illustration of three very fine typical heads 
in my collection from these areas, showing how, even at such short distances apart, the 
difference of shape and quality is entirely due to environment (p. 206). 
Sometimes a good head is obtained in the woods near Stirling, in the south of 
A GOOD HEAD, ALTYRE 
Argyleshire bordering the Clyde, in the Ayrshire, Forfarshire, and the Dumfriesshire 
woods, but for one good head from these places there are six obtained in the former localities. 
Bell, in his British Quadrupeds , seems to have known little about roe, for his notes are 
mostly from contributed sources, and his woodcut of the annual change of horns, from the 
second till the sixth year, may be perfectly correct for an individual specimen, though it does 
not apply to roe generally. In fact, in roe horn-growth there is the paradox that there is 
nothing regular but irregularity. After passing through the spike stage of the second year, 
to which a brow is added in the third year, the horns, though generally having a good brow 
and two small top points in the fourth, may after the fourth year take almost any form of 
bad or good development in the brow point and tops till head-decline sets in. 
2 d 2 
