36 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



famous of modern cattle. I feel little doubt that if the 

 ancient history of the parks I have mentioned could be 

 fully brought to light, and the animals they contained 

 known, it would be found that of many of them the 

 wild bull was a denizen — for I think there are some 

 faint, though valuable, traces of its existence in this 

 district. From parks in this neighbourhood* were 

 derived, principally, the bulls to the use of which, in the 

 last century, can be traced the great improvement which 

 was then made in the Tees water or Durham cattle, and 

 these bulls were generally white. Mr. John Hutchin- 

 son, banker, of Stockton-on-Tees, one of the most in- 

 telligent of the early Durham or Short-horn breeders, 

 and whose information went back further than that of 

 most people, considered that the improved Short-horns, 

 or Teeswaters, contained the blood of the " native white 

 breed preserved at Chillingham ;" while he calls the one 

 herd which contributed more than any other to the im- 

 provement a " white breed." f The Eev. Henry Berry, 

 too, one of the most devoted of breeders, and most ac- 

 complished and best informed of our writers on cattle, 

 says : — " One cross, to which the breeders on the banks 

 of the Tees referred, was, in all probability, the white 

 wuld breed ; and, if this conjecture be well founded, it 

 will be apparent whence the Short-horns derived a colour 



* These were the parks of the MiTbankes of Barmingham, within two 

 miles and a half of the Tees, and about five from Barnard Castle ; of the 

 Milbankes of Thorpe Perrow, close to Bedale ; and of the Aislabies of 

 Studley Royal, near Ripon. 



t This was the Studley Royal herd. In a letter, published in the 

 Farmer's Journal in 1821, Mr. Hutchinson calls these cattle, " the white 

 breed of Mr. Aislabie, of Studley Royal ; " and in a pamphlet, published in 

 1822, after mentioning " the Chillingham," which, he says, "may not im- 

 properly be called Albions," he adds, " and of which breed no doubt were 

 those at Studley." 



