2.14 British Deer and their Horns 
alive. These are massive horns with immense coronets, one being 9 inches and the other 
94- inches in circumference. The reader will, if he is a roe-hunter, think perhaps these 
measurements so extraordinary, that I have taken a tracing on paper of the largest of the 
two, so that he can see for himself that there is no exaggeration. In one of the rooms at 
Colebrooke is the collection of roe heads formed by the late Sir Victor Brooke. They 
are nearly all Scotch, and there is nothing unusual amongst them except the female roe head 
with rudimentary horns (figured). The heads of roe that were killed at Colebrooke also 
present no points of interest. 
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ACTUAL SIZE OF THE ORIGINAL HORN 
SCOTCH ROE HEADS 
Whilst Continental sportsmen have been collecting trophies of the chase for centuries, no 
one in this country seems to have thought much of a stag or roe’s head until well on in the 
present century—in fact, the horns of the latter were regarded as of no value in that way, and 
only of use to the cutler as handles for knives and forks. 
It is not surprising, then, that we have no collections of roe heads to compare with that 
of Count Arco, for instance, who till recently possessed no less than 2300 odd roe heads ; 
whilst rumour has it that the owner admitted spending not less than £60,000 on his collection. 
Thirty years ago the two first collectors of roe heads in this country may be said to have 
been the late Mackenzie of Seaforth and Roualeyn Gordon-Cumming. The former’s 
collection is said to be more or less intact, but when I visited it at Brahan Castle in 1890 I 
was much disappointed. There were only one or two good heads, a nice mossed one, of 
which a photo is given, and certainly no extraordinary examples such as one would expect to 
find, considering the advantages the collector enjoyed, and his keenness in following his 
hobby. I could hear nothing of a horn a foot long, which Snowie says his father had sold to 
Seaforth many years ago. 
Roualeyn Gordon-Cumming’s collection, which must have been a really fine one, came, 
