68 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



a distance of eighteen miles, and as " a goodly forest, 

 full of woods, red deer and fallow, wild swine, and all 

 manner of wild beasts." * But I have given a sufficient 

 specimen of what the EDglish Apennines were, when 

 clothed and surrounded with their primaeval forests ; and 

 I must leave it to the imagination of the reader to 

 work out the details. He can scarcely over-estimate the 

 wildness that everywhere prevailed, when an immense 

 forest spreading in all directions was in Southern Scot- 

 land supposed to have filled the intervening space 

 between Chillingham and Hamilton, a distance as the 

 crow flies of about eighty miles, including within it 

 Ettrick and numerous other forests. Still less can I 

 hope to depict the savagedom of the North, when the 

 great Caledonian wood, known even at f Rome, covered 

 the greater part of both lowlands and highlands, its 

 relics later affording protection, before its final extinc- 

 tion as a purely wild animal, to Scotland's grand white 

 bull, which history and tradition agree in telling us 

 had so long inhabited it. 



The whole of this immense range of mountains and 

 hills, with its vast forests and wastes, was possibly as 

 favourable a locality for the preservation of aboriginal 

 wild animals as the Hyrcinian Forest itself, with which, 

 indeed, it may bear some comparison. It is certainly a 



* Quoted by Jefferson in his " Hist, and Antiq. of Cumberland," 1840, 

 p. 7. The " Chartulary of Lanercost Priory " is in the library of the 

 Dean and Chapter of Carlisle, and Mr. Jefferson mentions in his preface, 

 page 7, that he was allowed to consult the MS. 



f The bear of the Caledonian forest was well known in the Roman 



circus, 



" JTuda Caledonio sic pectora prsebuit urso, 



Haud falta pendens in cruce Laureolus." 



And the " Sylva Caledon'a " is mentioned by the martial geographer 

 Ptolemy, and other Roman authors. 



