IO LANARKSHIRE RAMBLES. 



from very remote times held by the crown. It passed as a feu 

 from the crown (King Robert Bruce) to the Hamilton family. It 

 has been alleged that the king stipulated that a certain number of 

 white cows should be maintained and the oaks preserved ; but of 

 this there does not seem to be any confirmation. The conditions 

 in the charter were an annual payment of ^80 sterling with 22 

 chalders of wheat and 6 chalders of barley. 



After the battle of Langside, when Cadzow Castle was twice 

 besieged and taken and finally dismantled, and the chiefs of the 

 Hamilton family were executed or exiled and their power broken, 

 we do not know how it fared with the herd amid the foraging of 

 hungry armed men. It was at this time that the herd at Cumber- 

 nauld was nearly extirpated. 



On the authority of Mr. Robert Brown, a former ducal cham- 

 berlain, Sir William Jardine in the Naturalist? Library says that 

 during the troublous times of Charles I. and Cromwell " they were 

 nearly extirpated, but a breed of them having been retained for 

 the Hamilton family by Hamilton of Dalziel and by Lord Elphin- 

 stone of Cumbernauld, they were subsequently restored to their 

 ancient purity." 



In Wilson's Clyde (1764), a poem on which the author had been 

 engaged for many years, he refers to the cattle, so that I think we 

 may safely assume that about 1760 they occupied the same pastures 

 as now. 



Pennant in his Tours in Scotland (17 69-1 772) did not see the 

 cattle at Cadzow ; he heard that there were still a few kept. In 

 1772 he saw them at Drumlanrig. In the 4th edition of his 

 British Zoology (1786) he mentions having seen the cattle at 

 Drumlanrig and Chillingham, but says nothing of Cadzow. 



Bewick in his General History of Quadrupeds (1790) treats 

 fully of the Chillingham cattle, but he does not mention Cadzow 

 or Drumlanrig. He says that herds " were kept at several parks 

 in England and Scotland ; but they have been destroyed by 

 various means, and the only breeds now remaining in the kingdom 

 are in the park at Chillingham " and other English places. 



In the Statistical Account of Scotland (17 91) the article on the 

 Parish of Hamilton was written by Naismith of Drumloch, a local 

 authority on agricultural subjects. He says : — " Among these 

 venerable trees grazed the white cows mentioned by naturalists as 



