alive. These are massive horns with immense coronets, one being 9 inches and the other
9i inches in circumference. The reader will, i f he is a roe-hunter, think perhaps these
measurements so extraordinary, that I have taken a tracing on paper o f the largest o f the
two, so that he can see for himself that there is no exaggeration. In one o f the rooms at
Colebrooke is the collection o f 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 o f roe that were killed at Colebrooke also
present no points o f interest.
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S C O T C H R O E H E A D S
Whilst Continental sportsmen have been collecting trophies o f 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 o f no value in that w ay, 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
o f 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 o f 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 o f 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,
THE BEST HEADS IN THE COLLECTION OF THE LATE C. MACPHERSON GRANT, AND NOW AT DRUMDUAN, FORRES