226 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 



cause of their avoidance of man ? They are hunted 

 and shot in the field, and all the survivors impressed 

 with vivid facts for reminiscence, not as in the case 

 of ordinary cattle taken away individually to 

 shambles and slaughtered out of sight. For ages 

 they have been subject to such recurrent barbarity, 

 and the natural consequence is a hereditary distrust 

 of man. They are untamable only under this treat- 

 ment, and if handled like ordinary cattle their 

 wildness would be quite gone in a generation or 

 two. Just as in the case of the Chillingham cattle 

 calves taken at an early age and treated gently 

 have become " as tame as domestic animals," so 

 with the Cadzow ones it is recorded on the authority 

 of Mr. Brown, who was a former chamberlain of 

 the ducal family, that they have " been taken when 

 young and tamed and even milked." This account 

 goes on further to say : " The milk like that of most 

 white cattle is described as thin and watery. The 

 present keeper of the park at one time possessed a 

 cow, which he had taken when a calf in consequence 

 of the death of its mother ; it was gentle and was 

 milked as a cow, and bred freely with the common 

 bull." As it is, they are so far domesticated as to 

 come readily in winter for food and shelter to the 

 sheds erected for them. 



The extreme fierceness of the bulls is a point of 

 popular acceptance ; but it does not appear that 

 they are exceptionally lierce. Without presuming 

 too much on their goodwill, there is no reason to 

 treat them with special distrust. Bulls of the 

 ordinary domesticated breeds, when over three years 

 old, are mostly irritable and liable to irascible 

 outbursts, and rarely show gratitude or goodwill 

 for favours received. From familiarity with man, 

 such bulls lack awe of him, and show an original 

 aggressiveness such as does not exist to a like extent 

 among the Cadzow cattle, which have had occasional 

 experiences of man's bullet-power. Among them- 

 selves the bulls are savage enough. The law of battle 



