132 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



of the truly wild animal. This, however, proves 

 nothing either way. There is nothing to indicate 

 that Boethhis exaggerated, but much to show that he 

 did not. 



It must indeed be allowed that similar descriptions 



of the Bos (or, as they often called it, Bison) Scoticus, 



published abroad some years afterwards by the foreign 



writers, Paulus Jovius, Gresner, and Aldrovandus, and also 



those in the work of John Jonston, M.D. (published at 



Amsterdam in 1657, when the Scottish bull, as a forest 



animal, was well nigh extinct), add little or nothing 



to strengthen the statements of Boethius. They appear 



— as might have been expected from the circumstances 



of the authors — to have taken him as their authority, 



and to have copied from him almost literatim. But it 



was far otherwise with eminent Scottish writers who 



immediately succeeded him. John Bellenden was 



Archdeacon of Moray, a part of the country closely 



contiguous to that which the wild bull formerly 



inhabited, and must have been well acquainted with its 



history and its form. He translated the work of 



Boethius into the Scottish vernacular only twenty-seven 



years after its first publication — namely, in the year 



1553 — which I cannot but think was strong evidence 



of its value. Nay, he did more than this ; on the very 



point most at issue — the lion-like manes of these bulls — 



he added peculiar and remarkable words of his own which 



were not in the original, but which aptly describe even 



yet the hair on the necks of the Chillingham bulls. He 



says their mane was " crisp and curland," an addition to 



the description of Boethius which probably resulted from 



his own knowledge and observation. A few years later, 



in 1578, a most eminent Scotsman, Leslie, Bishop of 



