VARIOUS ACCOUNTS OF TEE EERD. 333 



with public roads on all sides, and are accustomed con- 

 tinually to people passing. There are also other cattle 

 grazing along with them, with which they have no 

 association but no hostility : so that they are in some 

 degree reclaimed from the savage state. The number is 

 limited, not being allowed to increase beyond about a 

 dozen. They are thinned by shooting, which requires 

 some precaution to accomplish. The full-grown weigh 

 about thirty stones (avoirdupois) the four quarters. The 

 meat is not reckoned so good as well-fed beef ; they 

 never, indeed, are so fat. They are distinguished by 

 the name ' Caledonian.' " 



Very similar to the independent testimony which 

 Bishop Leslie gives to the statements of Boethius is 

 that, corroborative of Mr. Robertson, given by the Rev. 

 Mr. Bryce, Parish Minister of Ardrossan, in the " New 

 Statistical Account of Scotland," published in 1837. In 

 this case, the one had these cattle, which he described, 

 under his own personal supervision ; the other related, a 

 very few years after their extinction, particulars with 

 regard to the Ardrossan cattle which nearly all his adult 

 parishioners well remembered. His narrative so nearly 

 resembles that of Mr. Robertson that it is not necessary 

 to transcribe it ; it is the less necessary as there are 

 many persons still living who remember them well, and 

 others who have heard many particulars respecting 

 them from people living a short time previous. These 

 testimonies have been collected for me through the 

 kindness of Mr. Hugh F. Weir, of Kirkhall, which is 

 only about eight hundred yards distant from the walls 

 of the Ardrossan parks. His grandfather was born at 

 Kirkhall in 1728, and died there in 1800 ; his father, 

 born there in 1757, died there in 1838; so that his 



