CHAPTER II 

 WILD WHITE CATTLE 



Aboriginal Cattle of Great Britain Bos urus or primigenius Bos 

 longifrons Relationship of Bos urus to Wild Park Cattle Author- 

 ities quoted : Storer, Harting, Low, Boyd Dawkins, McKenny 

 Hughes, T. A. Smith, Robert Knox, Sir Chas. Lyell, and Riitimeyer 

 The Breeds at Chillingham ark, Hamilton or Cadzow Park, Chartley 

 and Woburn Parks, Vaynol Park, and the Crosses in the Zoological 

 Society's Gardens, London. 



THE Aboriginal Cattle 1 of Great Britain, in common 

 with those of the continent of Europe, belonged to a 

 colossal ox, the Bos urus of Caesar, or, to use the more recent 

 and more common name, the Bos primigenius. Although it 

 is generally accepted that the original colour of cattle was 

 black or mouse-brown, or a combination of these, with a 

 lighter shade forming a stripe along the back, it is as 

 generally believed that the colour of the wild forest cattle 

 of Great Britain was white, with black or brown (red) points, 

 such as may be seen in the more or less degenerate repre- 

 sentatives of the species in the parks of Chillingham, 

 Hamilton, Chartley, and Vaynol the only places in the 

 United Kingdom, with the exception of Woburn Park (to 

 which a remnant of the Chartley herd was removed in 1905) 

 and the Zoological Society's Gardens in London, where pure 

 wild cattle exist. The latter sprang from a Chartley bull and a 

 Vaynol Park cow. Whatever may have been the origin of the 

 white hair and skin, the frequent appearance of black or dark 



1 See The Wild White Cattle of Great Britain, by the Rev. John 

 Storer, Cassell & Co.; Part II. of British Animals Extinct within 

 Historic Times, with some Account of British Wild White Cattle, by 

 James Edmund Harting, Trubner & Co. ; the " Report of the Committee 

 [of ten scientific men] appointed by the British Association to report on 

 the Herds of Wild White Cattle in Great Britain," The Zoologist, vol. xi., 

 November 1887. 



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