116 CATTLE-BREEDING. 



The cattle in all the parks are white, but from the occasional ap- 

 pearance of dark-colored calves it is extremely doubtful whether the 

 aboriginal Bos primigenius was white. The primeval forest for- 

 merly extended across the whole country from Chillingham to Ham- 

 ilton, and Sir Walter Scott used to maintain that the cattle still 

 maintained in these two parks, at the two extremities of the forest, 

 were remnants of its original inhabitants, and this view certainly 

 seems probable. 



These half -wild cattle, which have thus been kept in British parks 

 probably for four or five hundred years, or even for a longer period, 

 have been advanced by Culley and others as a case of long- continued 

 interbreeding within the limits of the same herd without any con- 

 sequent injury. With respect to the cattle at Chillingham the late 

 Lord Tankerville owned that they were bad breeders. The agent, 

 Mr. Hardy, estimates (in a letter to me [Mr. Darwin] dated May, 

 1861) that in the herd of about fifty the average number annually 

 slaughtered, killed by fighting, and dying, is about ten, or one in 

 five. As the herd is kept up to nearly the same average number the 

 annual rate of increase must be likewise about one in five. The 

 bulls, I may add, engage in furious battles, of which battles the 

 present Lord Tankerville has given me a graphic description, so that 

 there will always be vigorous selection of the most vigorous males. 

 I procured in 1855 from Mr. D. Gardner, agent to the Duke of Ham- 

 ilton, the following account of the wild cattle kept in the Duke's 

 park in Lanarkshire, which is about two hundred acres in extent: 

 The number of cattle varies from sixty-five to eighty, and the num- 

 ber annually killed (I presume by all causes) is from eight to ten, so 

 that the annual rate of increase can hardly be more than one in six. 

 Now in South America, where the herds are half -wild and therefore 

 offer a nearly fair standard of comparison, according to Azara the 

 natural increase of the cattle on an estancia is from one-third to 

 one-fourth of the total number, or one in between three and four; 

 and this no doubt applies to adult animals fit for consumption. 

 Hence, the half-wild British cattle which have long interbred within 

 the limits of the same herd are relatively far less fertile. Although 

 in an unenclosed country like Paraguay there must be some crossing 

 between the different herds, yet even there the inhabitants believe 

 that the occasional introduction of animals from distant localities 

 is necessary to prevent "degeneration in size and diminution of fer- 

 tility." The decrease in size from ancient times in the Chillingham 

 and Hamilton cattle must have been prodigious, for Prof. Riitimeyer 

 has shown that they are almost certainly the descendants of the gi- 

 gantic Bos primigenius. No doubt this decrease in size may be 



