292 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



precisely like the picture by Ward of the white bull at 

 Gisburne, mentioned before. It is without horns, and 

 stands about four feet six inches high, measured like a 

 horse, and is about seven feet long from the top of the 

 head to where the tail turns down." 



It appears from two letters in the Standard news- 

 paper, written by the Rev. Robert Potter, of Bulkington 

 Vicarage, near Rugby, dated September 7th and 9th, 

 1874, that his father resided at Gisburne Park from 

 1835 to 1840, during a part of the minority of the 

 present Lord Ribblesdale, and that he gave this stuffed 

 specimen now in Owen's College. Mr. Potter further 

 states that in 1836 he " first saw the wild cattle," which 

 were " white, with tawny-reddish ears." 



Prom the above evidence we may, I think, fairly 

 draw the following conclusions as regards origin : that the 

 Gisburne Park cattle came at first from Wh alley Abbey, 

 and were most likely obtained from the Asshetons ; the 

 two inter -marriages of the families, through both of 

 which the Listers obtained property, rendering it certain 

 that they had every opportunity of obtaining some of 

 the wild cattle also from the same source. That they 

 did so is confirmed by tradition, and still more by the 

 circumstance that both herds were of the same variety. 

 As regards colour, it seems quite certain, from Bewick, 

 Whitaker, and the first Lord Ribblesdale, that from 

 seventy to eighty or ninety years since these cattle were 

 red or brown-eared, and it appears that some of them 

 were so when Mr. Potter saw them in 1836; their 

 noses Dr. Whitaker describes as black, and very possibly 

 he saw some of that colour, but generally they were at 

 the above time red, brown, or flesh-coloured, and so 

 some of them must have been, according to Mr. 



