with roe. Certainly fallow deer both can andago take more care o f their horns when in the
v elve t; their trophies are not so much in the way as with the noble stag, and they i | not go
dashing through timber or running up against wire fences like roe, so that one may see
thousands o f heads without the slightest abnormality.
Here is a picture o f a three-horned fallow buck from Sir Robert Harvey’s park near
Slough, and I shot a buck in Mr. Lucas’s park this autumn (1896) which had both a long
snag going out and backwards by the brow point, and had also another point sticking right
out o f the centre o f the palm on the left horn.
In the museum o f the Marischal College, Aberdeen, there is the dropped horn of
a buck with two perfectly formed brow points, which I think is a great rariti
I havjSJnever seen a fallow doe with horns. In Boughton, the Duke o f Buccleuch’s
place near Kettering, Northamptonshire, there are preserved the1 h||ds o f two bucks that
had become interlocked and had thus died. This is a k a extremely rare, j r ^ p i u n t o f
the regular formation o f the antlers. Mr. Harting tells me he once .came a c r S a Couple
of bucks thus entangled, and it was B t until the horns were1 sawn p i f by the keeper that
the deer could be released.
We all know the ichrious effects o f castration on horn-growth, particularly, i f the
operation is only partially effected. Mr. Chonler, the head keeper at Dalkeith, tells me
that a hevier in that park grew a ! single horn 35^ inches Ifong, but it always remained
soft. It was round, -similar *0 a slag’s, with five points. Another threw, out a solid
horn which cleaned, with points springing in the most-curious manner from both sides.
I give .a sketch o f it on this page.
I f a buck is cut when his horns are off, he is said never to renew them, but I , am not
quite sure whether this is always the easel I f he ^op e ra ted upon when the horns are
on, he will not shell ithem as a rule, but there ^sometimes a tendency for a growth to.
come from the pedicle at the Commencement o f the next horn-growing season. I
have made inquiries as to the effect of cutting a buck when the horns are in the velvet,
but apparently in some cases the velvet is never shed, and the blood .goes on distributing
itself through the vessels, whilst in others the horn dries up and cleans in the same way
as any other buck’s.
Many o f our oldest and most interesting customs have gone from us, but here is a
relic o f days gone by, when our forefathers galloped through the forest and chased the
stags and fallow bucks with horse and hound. T h e excellent photograph of the horn
dance, which Mr. A . Edwards o f Uttoxeter kindly sends me, gives one some idea o f a
In the possession of Sir Robert Harvey, Bart., Langley Park, Slough.
strange old custom still carried on every September at Abbots-Bromley, a village on the
borders o f Needwood Forest in Staffordshire. What one cannot understand is how the
heads o f reindeer came to be substituted for those o f stags or fallow bucks, and I can get
no local information on the subject. From the old histories it is certain that stags’ and
fallow bucks’ heads were what were carried' by the dancers, and there is nothing to show
when or why reindeer’s heads were substituted. The following account of the horn or
“ hobby-horse ” dance is taken from the History o f Staffordshire, by William White :-£f
“ A remarkable custom called the ‘ hobby-horse dance’ was practised here yearly till
1 Another head-almost exactly similar to this one is in the ranger’s lodge, Richmond Park.