60 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



Chiltern " forest bull " and this Middlesex one in the 

 same category. They were, according to Fitz-Stephen, 

 who was contemporary with them, " wild beasts," and, 

 as such, classed with wolves, boars, stags, and fallow 

 deer ; and we thus have for more than 200 years, from 

 the time of Edward the Confessor to that of Henry II., 

 the extensive forests of Buckinghamshire, Hertford-r 

 shire, and Middlesex full of wild bulls — " abundabunt 

 abundanter." I will not say that they were white ones, 

 though they may have been ; that question must be left 

 an open one. But surely, when what I have described 

 was the state of things just outside the gates of London, 

 we must hesitate long before we assert dogmatically 

 that the Urus himself may not have still existed in the 

 ten times larger, wilder, and more remote forests, moors, 

 and mosses of the north. It is only by the merest 

 accident that we have obtained, from the casual allusions 

 of two ancient writers, these particulars with regard to 

 the neighbourhood of London itself; but what historian 

 shall tell us how it fared with the wild bull in the 

 eleventh or twelfth century amid the Grampians and the 

 Cheviots ? 



To that northern land we must now travel, and try 

 to find the wild bull in his mountain home. But first 

 it is necessary that we should clearly point out where 

 that home was. Commencing a few miles north of the 

 river Trent, there runs, in a continuous line northwards, 

 a long range of mountains, which are the very back- 

 bone of Northern England and Southern Scotland, to 

 which, from their resemblance to the similarly situated 

 line of mountains which runs through Italy, Camden 

 (whose " Britannia" was first published in 1586, nearly 

 300 years since) gives the name of "The English 



