BRITISH WHITE WILD CATTLE. 277 
year-old bull; one five-year-old bull; one bullock; five or six 
young bulls of different ages; two young bull-calves (one called 
two months old, the other two or three weeks, at the date of my 
visit); the remaining nine or ten being cows and heifers of various 
ages. They breed at any time of the year, but more calves are 
said to be born during the spring than at other times. Black 
calves appear to be of frequent occurrence, but they are always 
killed. Two such were born last winter (probably about the end 
of January). My conductor, Abel (an old man who had been there 
all his life), told me that when a calf other than white js dropped 
it is invariably entirely black, and never either piebald or of any 
other colour than black. The cattle are extremely quiet, and Abel 
did not seem to remember any instance to the contrary, except 
naturally when one had been caught up, &c. They feed them in 
a pen in the winter, giving them the best hay; the young ones are 
taken up before the older animals. Abel said there was a sort of 
legend that the herd could not be got up beyond twenty-one head, 
so the present Earl’s father set to work to try the experiment, and 
succeeded in getting the number up to forty, thereby proving the 
legend to be “alla tale.” The park is 1000 acres, and contains, 
besides the cattle, red and fallow deer, and about forty horses are 
turned out into it. I went up to the Hall to look at what heads 
there might be stuffed. Measurements of heads of all the four 
herds will be found together at the end. With respect to the mane 
that wild bulls were formerly credited with, the idea perhaps arose 
from the necks of the old bulls being of a darker shade of dirty 
white or cream-colour, than their bodies, and a very few longer 
hairs appearing on their crest and dewlap. The direction of the 
horns of this herd is peculiar; those of the full-grown bulls go 
rather out and very much down, and then turn upwards and out- 
wards. The cows’ horns go nearly straight outwards on each side, 
and also bend somewhat downwards at their base. Some time ago 
they exchanged a yearling bull with Lyme, but the one received 
in exchange was so different looking that they would not breed 
from him, and finally killed him. Two years ago they bred a 
female calf between a wild bull and common cow (I do not know 
her colour). The heifer is said to be almost exactly like the wild 
cattle. I only obtained a distant view of her: it struck me that 
she was of a brighter white than ordinary white cattle. 
Lyme.—The herd at Lyme Park, Cheshire (the seat of W. J. 
