IN RVURT HOLLOW 61 



jealous care, have now entirely died out. They were 

 fierce and powerful animals, and their fickle temper 

 was dreaded even by their keepers, one of whom 

 carried lately to his grave terrible scars from their 

 huge horns. 



Not far off, at Somerford in Cheshire, a few wild 

 cattle still survive, of the same stock no doubt as the 

 vanished beasts of Lyme. Others are preserved at 

 Chartley, in Staffordshire, and there is a herd of more 

 than fifty among the hills of Lanark. Perhaps at least 

 as numerous is the better known breed of Chillingham, 

 in Northumberland. 



Tradition regards these wild white cattle as a real 

 aboriginal race. It is held by high authorities that 

 they are descended from the old denizens of the British 

 forests, whose effigies have been handed down to us on 

 the coinage of Cunobelin. 



A puff of steam that rises at regular intervals from 

 among the trees half-way towards the hills marks the 

 presence of a coalpit, and whenever the wind happens to 

 set this way the throb of the engine is even at this dis- 

 tance plainly heard. The engine house is' hidden by the 

 clustering elms, and here, for once, an added touch of 

 beauty in the landscape is due to so unpromising a source 

 as the working of a colliery. The water from the shaft, 

 collecting in a deep hollow in the undulating ground, 

 has formed a broad pool, which Nature already begins to 

 claim for her own. Round the margin of the lake 

 marsh-marigolds have drawn a fringe of gold. Sedge- 

 warblers have found their way already to its thickets. 



