ANCIENT COLOUR OF THE EARS. 155 



The heir of Mr. William Taylor, of Hendon Grange, 

 was his brother ; by whose son I am informed that his 

 father, some years before his death, burnt in his yard 

 several large boxes of old family papers, and no doubt 

 the steward's " account book " among them. So that 

 we cannot ascertain anything further from this source ; 

 but these short quotations are very valuable, as showing 

 what was the state of the herd which belonged at that 

 time to the last Lord Grey of Wark. 



To the " white calfe " bought of William Kadyll, 

 and to the " guy," I shall allude further on. The 

 "12 white, read, and black-ear'd," otherwise "black 

 and read-ear'd," classed with the " steers and oxen," 

 were clearly of the same sort, and must, I think, 

 have been the produce (of that description) of " my 

 Lorde's 16 white wilde beasts " — their relative number 

 being about what was likely, and the herd of sixteen 

 so extremely small if it had also included steers. It 

 was small enough at that time on this, the most favour- 

 able, supposition. Bewick's assertion that about eighty 

 years later black-eared cattle existed in the Chillingham 

 herd is thus completely confirmed. Some have indeed 

 supposed that Bewick meant that calves were occasion- 

 ally born, twenty years before he wrote, with black ears, 

 but his words scarcely bear that construction — " There 

 were a few" — that is, in the herd — " with black ears." 

 These were clearly the remains of the " black-ear'd " 

 ones, which had been so much more numerous, relatively 

 to the rest, in William Taylor's time, in 1692. It 

 follows that originally there was a tendency to produce 

 ears of either colour, and that at Chillingham, as in 

 some other herds, the uniform prevalence of red ears 

 has been obtained by selection. 



