306 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



very often came pure white, with only black ears and 

 muzzles, and some of the cows were marked the same. 

 They were considered very good dairy cows and good- 

 looking, and people in that part of the country, at that 

 time, spoke of them as a good lot." 



It seems, then, certain that the Gunton cattle were 

 fine large cattle, good milkers, and had for some time con- 

 siderable influence in Norfolk. Mr. Gilbert suspects, from 

 the large size of some polled steers which have been occa- 

 sionally exhibited there, which he cannot otherwise ac- 

 count for, that this influence may even yet partially exist. 



The Blickling Hall Herd is an undoubted and 

 admitted off- shoot from the herd at Gunton Park. 

 The fine old Elizabethan mansion of Blickling came 

 into the possession of the Hobarts, created, in 1746, 

 Earls of Buckinghamshire, in whose hands it con- 

 tinued till 1793, when John, the second earl, dying 

 without issue male, Blickling came to Caroline, one 

 of his three daughters, who had married in the previous 

 year the Hon. William Assheton Harbord, eldest son 

 of the first Lord Suffield and of Mary Assheton, the 

 heiress of Middleton. Mr. Harbord, having succeeded 

 his father as second lord in 1810, died without issue 

 in 1821 ; but his widow retained Blickling, her own 

 hereditary property, till her death in 1850, when it 

 reverted to the grandson of her sister Henrietta, Mar- 

 chioness of Lothian, the eighth marquis of that name. 

 His widow, Constance, Marchioness of Lothian, is the 

 present owner. Her ladyship has given me every 

 assistance, and has allowed the Bev. George Gilbert, 

 of Claxton, near Norwich, to inspect and report upon 

 the herd in my stead. 



