270 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



after precluding any other mode of carriage of heavy 

 goods. 



The Wollaton herd of wild cattle were generally 

 known in the neighbourhood as " The Old Park 

 Breed " — a name clearly indicative of very remote 

 antiquity. They have been extinct a little over fifty 

 years. They must have been well known and celebrated 

 when Bewick wrote in 1790, for he classes this herd 

 among the five " only breeds now remaining in the 

 kingdom " of those ancient herds formerly so " nu- 

 merous," and he assigned to the Wollaton herd the 

 second place in the list. When I was, as a boy, 

 frequently in the neighbourhood, they had only recently 

 died out, and I am able to give a fair account of them, 

 obtained from those who knew them well. The late 

 Hon. and Bev. C. J. Willoughby, Bector of Wollaton, 

 whose recent and sudden death is so much to be de- 

 plored, took much interest in the subject, and supplied 

 me with the results of his inquiries ; and through the 

 kindness of Mr. William Kirkland, of Beeston, near 

 Nottingham, whose father was born at Wollaton, I have 

 obtained — besides some valuable reminiscences of his 

 own — much information from Mr. Thomas Burton, of 

 Beeston, now over seventy, who was born at the " King's 

 Head" Inn, Wollaton (now turned into cottages), which 

 his father then kept, and where he himself lived till 

 quite grown up. Mr. Burton says " that he well 

 remembers the white cattle ; that they had black noses 

 and black ears ; he does not recollect ever seeing any 

 with red ears ; they had a very fine circlet of black 

 round the eyes. They were polled, or without horns, 

 and were called ' the old park breed ; ' they were fine 

 beasts, and partially domesticated, some of the cows 



