40 HISTORY OF QUADRUPEDS. 



vancing nearer, till they come within ten yards; 

 when rrfost people think it prudent to leave them, 

 not chusing to provoke them further; for there is 

 little doubt but in two or three turns more they 

 would make an attack. 



The mode of killing them was, perhaps, the only 

 modern remains of the grandeur of ancient hunting. 

 On notice being given that a Wild Bull would be 

 killed on a certain day, the inhabitants of the 

 neighbourhood came mounted, and armed with 

 guns, &c., sometimes to the amount of an hundred 

 horse, and four or five hundred foot, who stood 

 upon 'walls, or got into trees, while the horsemen 

 rode off the Bull from the rest of the herd, until he 

 stood at bay: when a marksman dismounted and 

 shot. At some of these huntings twenty or thirty 

 shots have been fired before he was subdued. On 

 such occasions, the bleeding victim grew desperate- 

 ly furious, from the smarting of his wounds, and 

 the shouts of savage joy that were echoing from 

 every side; but, from the number of accidents that 

 happened, this dangerous mode has been little prac- 

 tised of late years ; the park-keeper alone generally 

 shooting them with a rifled gun, at one shot. 



When the Cows calve, they hide their calves for 

 a week or ten days in some sequestered situation, 

 and go and suckle them two or three times a day. 

 If any person come near the calves, they clap their 

 heads close to the ground, and lie like a hare in 

 form, to hide themselves : this is a proof of their 

 native wildness, and is corroborated by the follow- 

 ing circumstance that happened to the writer of 

 this narrative, who found a hidden calf, two days 

 old, very lean and very weak : On stroking its 

 head, it got up, pawed two or three times like an 



