AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. 



There exist now, and there have existed in this country 

 from the earliest historic times, herds of White Cattle, 

 perfectly distinct, and of a different breed from its 

 ordinary domestic races. Some of these herds seem 

 to have been always wild, some more or less domes- 

 ticated, and in other respects also they somewhat varied 

 — as might have been expected, living as they did in 

 localities far apart, and subjected as they were to 

 various modes of treatment. But in colour they were 

 everywhere alike, and everywhere different from others ; 

 and though among domestic animals nothing is so 

 fleeting and variable as colour, yet even among these a 

 persistency of the same tint during long ages clearly 

 indicates the antiquity of the race. How much more is 

 this true when not only, as in the case of the White 

 Cattle, the same general colour has been preserved under 

 the most adverse circumstances, but when small and 

 oftentimes unobserved minutiae of secondary markings 

 have everywhere distinguished them. 



While, then, a few of our wild white herds of cattle, 

 and some memory of others recently extinct, remain, 

 let me, though incompetent in many respects to under- 

 take so arduous a task, call attention to these most 

 ancient races — races preserving in Great Britain alone, 

 in some degree, their former character, and to which, I 



