208 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



The above account corroborates very strongly their 

 liability to " accidents," to which Lord Tankerville has 

 alluded ; and it shows, too, that at times many deaths 

 take place from their goring one another. But though 

 disagreeing altogether, for other reasons, with the 

 arguments of Culley, who considers this "as a case of 

 long continued inter-breeding within the limits of the 

 same herd without any consequent injury," and agreeing 

 with those of Mr. Darwin, in his admirable chapter on 

 " Grood from Crossing, and Evil from Inter-breeding," I 

 yet cannot, as respects the Chillingham cattle, concur in 

 all the conclusions of the latter. Before it is admitted 

 that the " annual rate of increase " in the Chillinghams 

 is " one in five " only, while that of the half -wild herds 

 in South America " is from one-third to one-fourth the 

 total number, or one in between three and four," it 

 ought to be shown that this is a "fair standard of 

 comparison " in the following respects — that the loss of 

 the latter from accidents is as great in the open plains 

 of Paraguay as it is in the steep and abrupt glens, the 

 narrow defiles, and thick woods of the confined park at 

 Chillingham: accidents, I mean, to the calf before birth 

 as well as after, for many calves are never born, in con- 

 sequence of the panics and stampedos to which their 

 dams are subject ; thus Dixon says, as we have seen, 

 " two such gallops in the course of a week, one season, 

 cost nearly every cow her calf." It ought also to be 

 shown that the same cause of infecundity prevails in 

 Paraguay which is so common at Chillingham — the 

 cow suckling her calf when it is more than a year old ; 

 this may or may not be the case there. But in addi- 

 tion, the very premises on which the conclusion is built 

 are in themselves fallacious — namely, that "the herd is 



