HISTORY OF QUADRUPEDS. 41 



old Bull, bellowed very loud, stepped back a few 

 steps, and bolted at his legs with all its force; it 

 then began to paw again, bellowed, stepped back, 

 and bolted as before ; but knowing its intention, he 

 stepped aside, and it missed him, fell, and was so 

 very weak that it could not rise, though it made 

 several efforts : but it had done enough ; the whole 

 herd were alarmed, and coming to its rescue, 

 obliged him to retire; for the dams will allow no 

 person to touch their calves, without attacking 

 them with impetuous ferocity.* 



When any one happens to be wounded, or is 

 grown weak and feeble through age or sickness, the 

 rest of the herd set upon it and gore it to death. 



The weight of the Oxen is generally from forty 

 to fifty stones the four quarters : of the Cows about 

 thirty. The beef is finely marbled, and of excellent 

 flavour. 



Those at Burton-Constable, in the county of 

 York, were all destroyed by a distemper a few 

 years since. They varied slightly from those at 

 Chillingham, having black ears and muzzles, and 

 the tips of their tails of the same colour: they were 

 also much larger, many of them weighing sixty 

 stones ; probably owing to the richness of the pas- 

 turage in Holderness, but generally attributed to 

 the difference of kind between those with black and 

 with red ears, the former of which they studiously 

 endeavour to preserve. The breed which was at 

 Drumlanrig, in Scotland, had also black ears. 



* Tame Cows, in season, are frequently turned out amongst the 

 Wild Cattle at Chillingham, and admit the Bull. It is somewhat 

 extraordinary, that the calves produced by this mode are invariably 

 of the same colour with the wild breed (white with red ears), and 

 retain a good deal of the fierceness of their sire. 



VOL. III. F 



