352 HIGHLAND AND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



COWS, described as of ' the Athole breed.' They were shown 

 by Sir John P. Orde of Kihnory. A note we made at the 

 time, taken from Sir John Orde's own statement, is that 

 the animals were descendants from a tribe of cattle that 

 formerly ran wild in the district of Athole, and had been 

 kept for many years at Kilmory. Sir John was inclined to 

 regard them as now forming a distinct breed. Hence they 

 were entered as of the 'Athole breed.'* 



* In the tenth volume of Society's Transactions (4th series, 1878), in the 

 Report on Argj-llshire, there is an interesting note by the editor, Mr F. N. 

 Menzies, respecting the herd of cattle belonging to Sir John P. Orde. The 

 note is in the words of the manager for Sir John, Mr James Aitchison. Mr 

 Aitchison, when in the service of the Duke of Buccleuch at Dalkeith Park, re- 

 members a lot of white cattle coming there in October 1833 or 1834, which 

 had been sold at a sale of the live stock at Blair Athole at that time, and being 

 told by the man who brought the cattle to Dalkeith that they belonged to a 

 tribe that had been at Athole 'from time immemorial.' Mr Aitchison left 

 Dalkeith Park for Kilmoiy in 1836 ; and in 1839, the Duke of Buccleuch 

 parting with the Athole cattle, a bull calf was got for Sir John Orde, and was 

 kept as a stock bull. Mr Aitchison, managing for Sir John, picked up any 

 pure Highland cows having a tendency to white. A really white cow mated 

 with the white bull never failed to have a white calf. ' We continued to breed 

 these in and in till they became as white as the original ones, all, however, 

 having black noses and a few black hairs on their ears, and their horns with 

 the points black, otherwise striped black and white. ' Mr Aitchison was ' told 

 that the Marquis of Breadalbane bought the rest of the white cattle ' at the 

 time that the animals came to Dalkeith Park, but that after a time those ob- 

 tained by the Marquis ' ceased to breed among themselves, though doing so 

 readily either way with the common Highland cattle.' The bull got from 

 Dalkeith ' getting rather old, we changed him with the Marquis for one rather 

 older, consequently, I conclude, one of the original herd from Athole, and we 

 had a few calves from him.' Except a bull got early from about Barcaldine, 

 in the north of Argyllshire, and an aged cow with calf at foot, got about 1S63, 

 ' we have not had any change of blood ; ' and the cattle ' are now quite a 

 family type of more than twenty years. There has not been a calf born 

 spotted, or other than pure white, except the black muzzle and black hairs on 

 the ears as before mentioned.' Mr Aitchison adds — 'I sent some few years 

 since six heifers to Her Majesty's farm at Windsor ; but Mr Tait, the manager 

 there, told me that, though the crosses with the Shorthorn bull answered ad- 

 mirably, they had to give them up, owing to its getting wind that they were 

 "Scotch wild cattle," and when ladies were walking in the park they looked 

 at them with their black eyes. ' 



We may add here that, on a former occasion (Perth, 1836), specimens of 

 the breed were shown by four different exhibitors ; James Stewart, Loak, 

 Perth, exhibited a yearling bull, bred by himself, and a six-year-old cow, bred 

 by Lord Glenlyon. The Marquis of Breadalbane exhibited a cow purchased 

 from Lord Glenlyon. The Hon. Fox Maule and Sir John Muir Mackenzie, 



