CHAP. I. HERDS OF WILD CATTLE. 9 



and the cows get, in addition, a little cotton-seed cake. The keeper, 

 after twenty years' experience with the herd, says they are much less 

 wild and dangerous now than formerly, in consequence of their being of 

 late years visited by many people. 



As to the probability that this herd was formerly polled, Joseph 

 Dunbar, who had been in the ducal service for half a century, stated 

 that, in 1842, the cattle were all hornless, and that the present Duke's 

 grandfather caused all showing the least appearance of being horned to 

 be killed. 



Chillingham. The average number of the herd for many years has 

 been maintained at about sixty head. The births have averaged over 

 nine a year, and the deaths about the same. The causes of death, 

 besides the shooting of oxen and occasionally of an aged or sickly bull or 

 cow, include old age, drowning, injuries received in fighting, rupture, 

 cancer, fall, and other injuries; poverty and want of food; and, in 

 calves, the failure of the dam's milk. The cattle live on good terms 

 with the red deer, but they will not tolerate fallow deer or sheep in the 

 park, possibly because these eat the pasture too close, or more probably 

 from the fact that the red deer were, like themselves, primeval denizens 

 of the forest. They will never touch turnips. During the last few 

 winters, silage has been given them along with the hay. For a long 

 time, however, they would not touch the silage ; they sniffed at it and 

 turned away. Even when all the hay had been eaten the silage was 

 still left uneaten. At length a young bull was seen to try it; he went 

 back to the herd and they returned to the silage with him. Since then 

 the silage is always finished before the hay is touched. It is not 

 deemed prudent to give very much of this material, as it appears to 

 over-stimulate for a time the flow of milk, after which the latter fails. 

 One obstacle in the way of increasing the herd is that the cows continue to 

 suckle a calf even after a second has been born; the latter is consequently 

 left to starve. The calves dropped in winter suffer from want of milk. 

 The herd is subject to sudden panics, owing to strangers who frighten 

 the cattle on purpose to see them run. It is denied that any calves are 

 dropped coloured. They are claimed to be always white, with black 

 extending very slightly beyond the naked part of the nose, and with red 

 ears ; though in Bewick's time (towards the end of last century) there 

 were some with black ears, and from the steward's book in 1692 there 

 appeared not only to be several animals with black ears, but some which 

 were apparently entirely black, and one which was brown. Bewick, in 

 his "Quadrupeds," 8th ed., 1824, says, "About twenty years since 

 there were a few at Chillingham with black ears, but the present park- 

 keeper destroyed them, since which period there has not been one with 

 black ears." It is believed that Culley's celebrated Shorthorns at the 

 beginning of this century were bred by a cross secretly obtained with a 

 Chillingham wild bull; and Bewick, in his work just mentioned, 

 remarks, " Tame cows, in season, are frequently turned out amongst 

 the wild cattle at Chillingham." 



At the Newcastle-upon-Tyne meeting of the British Association in 

 1889, Mr. R. G. Bolam, in writing the Guide to Chillingham, remarked 



