224 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 
made the journey to Britain, and these regions, and lived about 
the middle of the fourth century before Christ, I myself think it 
doubtful, or he would not have mixed up two animals, or have 
transcribed the description of them from Pytheas. As regards 
Boethius, it is strange that credence was given to his description 
of lion-like bulls. He tells us in his ‘“ History,” which contains 
the account of the lion-like bulls, that “in the year of God 1510 
a very strange animal came out of Gairloch, in Argyle, as ‘ meikel 
as ane grewhound,’ with feet like ‘ganer,’ and that great trees 
were struck down by ‘dint of her tail.’ She killed three men 
(hunters) with ‘three strakes of her tail,’ and that if the 
‘remaunt hunters’ had not ‘clam up in a strang aikis’ they would 
have been ‘all slain in same manner.’” If the story of the lion- 
like bulls is accepted, why is that of the feminine grewhound 
rejected ?1 
Anyway, in the passage about wild lion-like bulls, Hector 
Boece himself says that the wild white cattle are exceedingly 
like the ordinary tame or domestic breed, and that their flesh is 
very pleasant food, and much approved of by the nobility. Here, 
I think, we find one reason why these white cattle have been 
preserved, namely, that their flesh was much approved of by the 
nobility in olden days, Many illustrations can be given in support 
of this point. As it is often claimed that Cadzow Forest is a part of 
Boece’s Caledonian Forest, and the white cattle there the descend- 
ants of his lion-like bulls, I would direct attention to a report in the 
Glasgow Herald of a paper by Mr. Hugh Boyd Watt, on ‘Scottish 
Forests as they appear in early historic times,” read before the Ander- 
sonian Naturalists’ Society. Mr. Watt, in his paper, pointed out 
that (so far as the word “ forest” is to be taken as meaning a piece 
of woodland or a tree-clad district, and not a chase or hunting 
ground lying in waste) it seems clear that our native forests had 
passed their maximum size and density at the dawn of history in 
Scotland. Evidence in support of this is chiefly furnished by the 
widespread distribution of our peat bogs and mosses, in which 
many remains of forest trees, mostly oaks and birch, are to be 

1 Gesner gives an illustration which appears to be that of an ordinary 
greyhound, and writes ‘‘Canis Scoticus Venaticus, quem Scoti vocant ane 
grewhound, id est canem Grecum.” 
