TEE MIDDLETON EALL EEET). 295 



Ashton of Middleton; these I presume were first brought 

 from the high-lands of Scotland. They have no Horns, 

 but are like the Wild Bulls and Cows upon the Conti- 

 nent of America, of which Monsieur Hennipin has given 

 us a full account in his travels up the Eiver Mesaskippi, 

 upon the Banks of which great Herds of these are 

 frequently seen grazing, & are Hunted by the Indians, 

 as the Deer by us." 



We may treat Dr. Leigh's supposition that the 

 Middleton cattle came from the Highlands of Scotland 

 as mere surmise. He himself mentions it as such, and 

 gives no authority for thus supposing. But it must be 

 observed that, according to his account, they were clearly 

 not then domesticated, but " Wild Cattel " in the park, 

 and " like the wild bulls and cows on the Continent of 

 America"; and he states this not as a mere surmise, 

 but as an observed fact, in the same sentence in which 

 he says "they have no horns." I think we must 

 conclude that they were then really wild, park animals. 

 To illustrate this the more, he compares them to the 

 essentially wild American Bison, mis-called Buffalo, in 

 the valley of the Mississippi. The appearance of this 

 animal would probably be sufficiently well known to a 

 clever naturalist and philosopher like Dr. Leigh, in the 

 year 1700, and so it appears, from his reference, it was; 

 and its peculiar characteristic is an enormous hairy 

 and shaggy mane, which envelopes the fore quarters in 

 such a mass of hair that the somewhat small horns are 

 well-nigh concealed. Not quite two hundred years 

 before, Boethius and Leslie had described the wild 

 Caledonian bulls of their day as similarly distinguished; 

 and both Darwin and Sir Walter Scott have alluded to 

 the loss of this hairy appendage in the present day as 



