424 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 
In folk-lore, at least in Scotch folk-lore, I have noticed that 
bulls and cows are black. We have references to the ‘“ Black 
Cow of Germany,” the ‘“ Black Bull of Norway,” and such sayings 
as ‘‘the black bull has trodden on your feet.” Even Grimm 
asks—“ What can the black cow mean in the following phrases :— 
‘The black cow crushes him,’ ‘The black cow has trodden on 
him?’” Setting aside the question of meaning, the special colour 
must have been the universal one, or it must have been the colour 
of the “wild” bulls and cows. In connection with the superstition 
regarding bulls’ heads there is, or rather must have been, one in 
Scotland, which, if it could be explained, might help us now as 
regards the origin of wild bulls and white bulls. Between 1440 and 
1631, there are many instances in Scottish history, where a bull’s 
head was employed as a token of death. Why should a bull’s head 
be a token of death? Was it the head of a white sacrificial 
bull? Bulls, white and black, have found their way into 
heraldry. I have taken the trouble to look through a standard 
work on crests, and I find 13 crests with a Demi Bull, 1 with a 
Bull’s leg, and 330 with Bulls, sometimes borne winged, and Bulls’ 
heads and horns. Of the latter, 57 per cent. are argent and 43 
per cent. sable. The white bulls thus preponderate, and in 
many cases these white bulls are marked to show ears, tip of 
horns, hoofs, and point of the tail, sable. If these crests were 
taken or obtained for slaying a wild bull, then these animals 
must have been both white and black. 
There are many points of view from which our subject can be 
studied, the physiological, osteological, and archeological. If our 
authorities, scientific and antiquarian, would give the matter some 
attention, perhaps we would be better able to solve the problem. 
I have endeavoured to indicate its many sidedness as far as I can, 
but, of course, a personal survey, without aid, must be subject to 
many limitations. I would, for instance, say that many points 
could be noted by those interested in our old texts—in Folk Lore 
and in local histories. In Ossian’s Poems, for example, we read— 

1 Heywood, in 1562, wrote :— 
‘« The blacke oxe neuer trode on thy foote : 
But the dun Asse hath trode on both thy feete 
Which Asse and thou, may seeme sproong of one roote : 
For the Asses pace and thy pace are meete.” 

