4 THE COMPLETE GRAZIER. BOOK i. 



the park-keeper generally going alone and shooting one of the 

 animals with a rifle. 



" When the cows calve they hide their } r oung ones for a week or ten 

 days in some sequestered situation, suckling them two or three times 

 a day. If any person comes near the calves, the latter press their heads 

 close to the ground, and lie like a hare in its form in order to conceal 

 themselves. This is a proof of their native wildness, and is corroborated 

 by the following circumstance, which happened to the writer of this 

 narrative. He found a hidden calf, two days old, veiy lean and very 

 weak. On his stroking its head it got up, pawed two or three times 

 like an old bull, bellowed loudly, retired a few steps, and then charged 

 at his legs with all its force. Once more it pawed, bellowed, stepped 

 back, and charged as before ; but the intruder knowing its intention, 

 and stepping aside, it missed him, and fell, and was unable to rise 

 again, although it made several efforts. It had, however, done enough ; 

 for the whole herd was alarmed, and, coming to its rescue, obliged him 

 to retire. The dams will allow no person to touch their calves without 

 attacking him with impetuous ferocity. 



" When any one of the herd happens to be wounded, or grown weak 

 or feeble through age or sickness, the rest set upon it, and gore or 

 trample it to death. There is rarely, however, any sickness among 

 them, and they are seldom suffered to become more than eight or nine 

 years old." 1 



The question has been raised, and pretty fully discussed, as to 

 whether the wild cattle just described are identical with the progenitors 

 of the various breeds of this country which will presently come under 

 our notice. The whole subject is so beclouded with mystery, and the 

 evidence required to enable us to come to a decision on the point goes so 

 far back into the history of our own country, that records are not to be 

 met with, or, if available, cannot be trusted as authentic. All that is 



1 "The way from Belford to Chillingham is over a fine wild moor. Kyloe Crags, the 

 Field of Flodden, Ford Castle, on whom old Cheviot himself looks down, Ross Castle with 

 its Heronry, and Hepburn Wood, dear to the woodcock, are all in the expanse of rock 

 and ling, while Chillingham Park rises as it were terrace upon terrace, with the white dots, 

 not far below the sky-line, which tell of its famous cattle. There 



' They are grazing, their heads never raising 

 There are forty feeding like one,' 



and we have to discard at the first glance every wild-bull-thought for Wordsworth's milder 

 rhymes. Our ideas change an hour after, as on the keeper's old horse we ride the hill, and 

 cautiously keeping near a strongly-fenced plantation, so as to be able to abandon the horse 

 on an emergency, and retreat over the rails, we get within a hundred yards of them. We 

 might have got nearer, but a herd of startled bucks trotted past them, and as one rose they 

 all rose, and moved off at a foot's pace, the old bull behind, and the king bull leading. 

 The latter will find years tell on him. in his turn, and when he is seven or eight, two 

 younger ones will attack him fore and aft, and he will walk moody and downcast like the 



deposed monarch in the rear Like Highland herds going along a road they are 



subject to panics, and two gallops in the course of a week one season, owing perhaps to the 

 rustling of deer near them, cost nearly every cow her calf. The calves are dropped in the 

 fern, but they are sad little Tartars ; and if they have been housed, it takes nearly two 

 months to take off the tame smell. . . . Their sense of smell is exceedingly acute, and a 

 cow has been seen to run a man's foot like a sleuthhound, when he had run for his life to a 

 tree. While Sir Edwin Laudseer was taking sketches for his celebrated pictures, the herd 

 went into action, and he was glad to fly to the forest as they passed by." "Saddle and 

 Sirloin." 



