266 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OP GLASGOW. 



volume of the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture says : — ''With 

 the exception of the aboriginal breed of cattle, a few of which, 

 polled, and of a dingy white colour, are still to be seen in the park 

 of the Duke of Hamilton at Cadzow, the West Hishland or Kvloe 

 breed is the oldest in Scotland." It will be noticed that the 

 Hamilton cattle are not termed " wild " bv this writer. About 

 this period — 1838 — Lord Tankerville, who inspected the Hamilton 

 cattle, wrote: — "Thev have no beautv, no marks of hisjh breedinsr, 

 no w^ild habits, being kept, when I saw them, in a sort of 

 paddock ; and I could hear no history or tradition about them 

 which entitled them to be called wild cattle." Though Lord 

 Tankerville is not a disinterested, vet in one sense he is an 

 expert, witness. Being polled, the cattle would probably be a 

 domestic breed. 



Mr. Lofft, of Troston Hall, has pointed out that the white 

 polled breed was much more common in the last century than we 

 think, or the owners of herds of white cattle care to admit. For 

 instance, he points out that Ward, the elder, who painted in the 

 eighteenth century, was particularly fond of introducing into his 

 landscapes this sort of cattle. In a large landscape by this 

 painter in the National Gallery, London, there stands in the fore- 

 ground, a grand white polled bull with red ears. In the same 

 gallery there is another picture, much smaller, with a white bull, 

 also with red ears. In another landscape is shown a white-homed 

 cow, with red ears. 



I have quoted the remarks of Lord Tankerville on the Hamilton 

 cattle. It is but right, I think, to say that the purity of the 

 Chillingham cattle [PI. VII.] is not above suspicion. A question 

 often asked is, what became of the wild cattle that used to be in 

 Drumlanrig Park ? Ramage, in his work on " Drumlanrig Castle 

 and the Douglases," published in 1876, says: — "'There is a tradition 

 that, about a hundred years ago, the whole stock was sold and 

 driven off en masse to Chillingham, the seat of the Earl of 

 Tankerville, in Northumberland, via Durisdeer and the Wald- 

 path, and as they were rather an unruly drove, they were 

 accompanied to the confines of the countv bv almost all the men 

 and do£:s in the surrounding; district." 



I think it must be admitted that, when you have a whole country- 

 side participating in a drive like this, the tradition of it will be 



