58 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



Dunsmore Heath was in those days a wild and large 

 moor, in a heavily-wooded district, and close to the 

 small town of Dunchurch; it extended over numerous 

 parishes, and three of them are yet called Bourton- 

 upon-Dunsmore, Stretton-upon-Dunsmore, and Byton- 

 upon-Dunsmore. There is no reason to suppose that 

 the colour of the cow was " dun." That prefix has 

 evidently become attached to her name because she was 

 the Dunsmore cow; exactly as the celebrated cow 

 which was said to have miraculously determined the 

 site of Durham Cathedral, being found in the " Dun 

 Holme," a pasture of that name, was afterwards known 

 as the " dun cow." There is some reason (to which I 

 shall afterwards allude) for conjecturing that the wild 

 cow of Dunsmore may have been white. 



In very early English history we have wild bulls 

 several times mentioned. In King Cnut's " Consti- 

 tutiones de Foresta " there is a passage as follows : * — 

 " There are also very many other animals, which, 

 though they live within the enclosure of the forest, can 

 nevertheless not be considered as belonging to the 

 forest, such as Bubali, cows, and the like." " Bubali " 

 — literally, buffaloes, which never existed in England — 

 is considered to mean wild bulls, in which sense it is 

 frequently used by Eoman authors. There is nothing 

 to show whether or not these bulls were white : perhaps 

 not ; they appear to be what Yirgil calls " tauri syl- 

 vestres," half -wild domesticated cattle. 



Speaking of a time somewhat later, Matthew Paris, 

 in his " Lives of the Abbots of St. Albans, " says, with 

 regard to Leofstan, abbot in the time of Edward the 



* Spelman's " Glossary," p. 241 ; and Thorpe's " Ancient Laws of 

 England," 8vo, vol. i., p. 429, chap, xxxii. 



