LINE BREEDING. 115 



truly half wild. A brief inquiry into their his- 

 tory, circumstances and condition, will be in- 

 structive in this connection, and I shall give a 

 resume closely following Mr. Darwin's account, 

 of which the following is a close paraphrase 

 where it is not verbally quoted: . 



Three forms or species of Bos, originally inhabitants of Europe, 

 have been domesticated. Bos primigenius existed as a wild animal 

 in Csesar's time and is now semi-wild, though much degenerated in 

 size in the park of Chillingham; the Chillingham cattle are less 

 altered from the true primigenius type than any other known breed. 

 The park is so ancient that it is referred to in a record of the year 

 1220. The cattle in their instincts and habits are truly wild. They 

 are white, with the inside of the ears reddish brown, eyes rimmed 

 with black, muzzles brown, hoofs black, and horns white, tipped with 

 black. Within a period of thirty-three years about a dozen calves 

 were born with " brown or blue spots upon the cheeks or necks; but 

 these, together with any defective animals, were always destroyed." 

 The wild white cattle in the Duke of Hamilton's park, where I have 

 heard of the birth of a black calf, are said by Lord Tankerville to 

 be inferior to those at Chillingham. The cattle kept until the year 

 1780 by the Duke of Queensbury, but now extinct, had their ears, 

 muzzles, and orbit of the eyes black. Those which have existed 

 from time immemorial at Chartley closely resemble the cattle at 

 Chillingham, but are larger with some small difference in the color 

 of the ears. " They frequently tend to become entirely black; and a 

 singular superstition prevails in the vicinity that when a black calf 

 is born some calamity impends over the noble house of Ferrers. All 

 the black calves are destroyed." The cattle at Burton Constable in 

 Yorkshire, now extinct, had ears, muzzle, and the tip of the tail 

 black. Those at Gisburne, also in Yorkshire, are said by Bewick to 

 have been sometimes without dark muzzles, with the inside alone of 

 the ears brown; and they are elsewhere said to have been low in 

 stature and hornless. The several above specified differences in the 

 park cattle, slight though they be, are worth recording, as they show 

 that animals living nearly in a state of nature and exposed to nearly 

 uniform conditions if not allowed to roam freely and to cross with 

 other herds do not keep as uniform as truly wild animals. For the 

 preservation of a uniform character, even within the same park, a 

 certain degree of selection that is, the destruction of the dark- 

 colored calves is apparently necessary. 



