242 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 



their habits that we are not warranted in conclud- 

 ing that they are truly wild animals. The tamest 

 animals, if left to themselves, revert in a few gener- 

 ations to a wild state. The relapsed herds of cattle, 

 originating in strayed domesticated animals, present, 

 in some countries, a case in point, and in wild instincts 

 and habits far out-do our British white cattle. If we 

 reflect that such white cattle are undoubtedly of the 

 same species as the domestic ones, with which they 

 breed readily ; that they go with young precisely the 

 same time ; and that they differ from every known 

 wild species of cattle in not having the rutting res- 

 tricted to any particular season of the year, we shall 

 be led to conclude that they are descended from a 

 domesticated race, and that they have relapsed so 

 far into wildness that they avoid man. Considering, 

 too, that they appear to have been formerly much 

 commoner about the parks and hunting-seats of kings 

 and nobles than now, I think that the opinion of Dr. 

 John Alexander Smith, in his exhaustive Notes on tiie 

 Ancient Cattle of Scotland, is probably correct, and 

 that they are an instance of a beautiful and esteemed 

 variety of our domesticated cattle, preserved arti- 

 ficially in a half-wild state. Mr. Edward K. Alston, 

 in the Fauna of Scotland, coincides in this view. "To 

 me," he says, " the evidence appears overwhelmingly 

 to prove that the modern park cattle are not wild 

 survivors of the Urus, but are the descendants of a 

 race which had escaped from domestication, and had 

 lived a feral life till they were enclosed in the parks 

 and chases of the mediaeval magnates." 



According to the high authority of Professor Riiti- 

 meyer, based on his examination of a Chillingham 

 skull, these cattle are to be regarded as closely allied 

 to the Bos prlmigenius, though much smaller. "Putting 

 aside the lesser size," he states, "the skull differs in 

 no way from the wild prunlgenius. The Chillingham 

 skull is an elegant diminished copy of the mightier 

 and stronger diluvial oxen of Europe, and the his- 

 torical descent of the first from the last cannot be 



