
WHITE CATTLE: AN INQUIRY INTO THEIR ORIGIN, ETC. 269 
a long period of domestication. Polled white cattle with black 
points are, or have been, kept at Somerford Park, in Cheshire, 
Wollaton, Notts. and Burton Constable, Yorkshire. The 
domesticated polled white cattle at Somerford Park, Cheshire, 
have been there for over 200 years. Domesticated white cattle, 
with red or brown points, used to be at Gisburne, Yorkshire, and 
Whalley Abbey, Lancashire. The domesticated white cattle at 
Gunton and Bickling, in Norfolk, had black and dark-brown or 
red points. At Woodbastwick and Brooke, Norfolk, the points 
were red and dark-brown or black and brown. At Stanton 
Hall, in Suffolk, in 1894, half of the domesticated white polled 
breed had black points, the other half red points. Polled white 
cattle have also been kept and termed wild at Middleton in 
Lancashire, Ardrossan in Ayrshire, and Hamilton, Lanarkshire, 
but at the latter place they have now been furnished with horns. 
At Rambouillet, in France, an ancient white hornless breed was 
also kept, which, unfortunately, was exterminated in 1815 by the 
cattle plague. Further, a domesticated race of white cattle, 
horned, with red ears, is known to have existed in Wales in the 
tenth and twelfth centuries. 
With regard to the polled white cattle at Middleton, said to be 
wild, it is rather a curious circumstance, I think, that Leigh, in 
the “Natural History of Lancashire,” says that in 1700 these 
wild cattle were supposed to have been brought from the High- 
lands of Scotland, which shows that a polled white breed existed 
then in Scotland. The cattle at Hamilton (Cadzow Forest or 
Chatelherault Park) are known to have been once polled. 
Martin, writing in 1852, says, “The semi-wild cattle of 
Chatelherault Park, in Lanarkshire, the descendants of an 
ancient race, are mostly, if not always, polled.” Dr. Knox, 
in his memoir on “The Wild Ox of Scotland,” published by 
the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1837-8, speaks of the Hamilton 
cattle as polled, and notes that a cross between a white Hamilton 
pull and a Shetland cow produced a polled ox nearly quite 
black. About the same date, 1835-6, a writer in the fourth 

1Polled cattle are to be found in Southern Norway, and it is stated that 
our big polled white cattle came to Great Britain 800 years ago with the 
Baltic Rovers, 
H 
