WILD WHITE CATTLE. 405 



Chillingham. — In October last this herd numbered sixty 

 animals, which has been the average number for the last twenty- 

 three years, though Lord Tankerville wishes to raise the number 

 to 70, which would suffice for the extent of the park. During the 

 period named, 113 male calves and 105 females have been dropped, 

 averaging over nine a year. The deaths have averaged about ten 

 annually. The causes of death, besides the shooting of oxen and 

 an occasional aged or sickly bull or cow, include old age, drowning, 

 injuries received in fighting, rupture, cancer, fall, and other in- 

 juries ; poverty and want of food ; and, in calves, the failure of 

 the dams' milk. The cattle live on good terms with the Red- 

 deer, but will not tolerate the Fallow-deer or sheep in the park, 

 possibly because they eat the pasture too close. They never will 

 touch turnips. During the last few winters ensilage has been 

 given them along with the hay, but for a long time none of them 

 would eat it. They sniffed at it and turned away, and it 

 remained untouched, even when all the hay had been eaten. 

 At length a young bull was seen to try the ensilage ; he went 

 back to the herd, and they returned to the ensilage with him. 

 Since then it has always been finished before the hay is 

 attacked. It is not thought prudent to give too much ensilage, 

 as it appears to stimulate the milk in the cows too much for a 

 time, and it afterwards fails. One difficulty in increasing the 

 herd is that the cows continue to suckle their calf even after a 

 second calf is born, and the latter is consequently left to starve. 

 The calves dropped in winter suffer from want of milk. The herd 

 is subject to sudden panics, owing to strangers frightening them 

 purposely to see them run, and several calves have been trodden 

 to death in these stampedes. Drowning in the marshes has been 

 a frequent cause of death in wet winters and during thaws. It is 

 denied that any calves are now coloured otherwise than the correct 

 white, with black extending very slightly beyond the naked part of 

 the nose, and red ears ; though in Bewick's time (towards the end 

 of the last century) there were some with black ears, and from 

 the steward's book in 1692 it appears there were not only several 

 animals with black ears, but some entirely black and one brown.* 



- Storer, 'Wild White Cattle,' p. 154; and Harting, 'Extinct British 



Animals,' p. 234. Bewick, ' Quadrupeds,' 1824, p. 39, in a foot-note, says : 



"About twenty years since there were a few at Chillingham with black 



