228 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETT OF GLASGOW. 



would hardly be accurate to say " translated," as he 

 curtailed, amplified, and altered as seemed good. 

 As Boece wrote mainly for the world outside Scotland, 

 Bellenden wrote for the Scottish themselves. His 

 work is said to have been first printed in 1536, 

 about ten years after the original. Bellenden seems 

 to be conscious that the leonine mane had to be 

 curtailed somewhat, so he quaintly gives a different 

 turn to the passage with some original resemblance 

 and much new sense, thus : " quhit bullis with crisp 

 and curland mane like fiers lionis." It is no longer 

 the mane that is leonine — as, indeed, how could it be 

 if "crisp and curland?" — bat the bulls themselves, 

 and the expression may be as readily taken as 

 referring to their temper as their appearance. Some 

 things might pass in Latin which would be ques- 

 tioned if in the vernacular. 



Leslie, in the first seven books of his history (De 

 Origine, Moribus, et Rebus gestis Scotorn?n, etc., 

 published at Rome, 1578), gives little more than an 

 abridgment of Boece. He adds, however, to Boece's 

 description of the mane, calling it thick and hanging 

 down (" densam ac demissam"). 



Continental naturalists followed Boece's description, 

 identifying the animal with the bison of Central 

 Europe ; but this is undoubtedly incorrect, and there 

 is not the faintest evidence that the Bos Bison ever 

 existed in Britain in historic times. 



There is an interesting reference to the white 

 cattle of Cumbernauld Forest in a State paper of 

 1570, bringing certain charges against the Regent 

 Lennox. The following is one of these charges : 

 " And amonges others greite enormyties perpetrated 

 be th' erles men of werre they have slayne and 

 destroyed the dere in John Fleming's forest of 

 Cummernald and the white kye and bulles of the 

 saide forest, to the greit destruction of policie and 

 hinder of the common wele, for that kinde of kye 

 and bulles has bene thir mony yeres in the said 

 forest, and the like was not maynteyned in any 



