334 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



assistance has been invaluable. Mr. Weir's father, 

 " being in his younger years a good ball-shot at a 

 long distance, had often to go down and despatch a wild 

 beast which the keepers had wounded and failed to kill, 

 and which they dared not approach, but which he 

 managed to kill from the top of the walls." 



Mr. Weir was informed that these cattle were 

 originally horned, by Alexander Bartlemore, of Seafield, 

 near Ardrossan (a feu from Lord Eglinton), who died 

 several years ago : he was a son of Bartlemore, the 

 favourite servant of the tenth earl. He said, " that 

 the wild cattle were introduced about 1750, and that 

 they were then exceedingly wild, and had horns." And 

 exactly the same evidence was given by Andrew Clerk, 

 another old tenant on the Ardrossan estate, which he 

 said he had received from his wife's father, a tenant 

 in the neighbourhood under the tenth earl, who 

 introduced the cattle. 



Mr. William Coulter, a retired watchmaker, living 

 at Saltcoats, near at hand, remembers well the Ardrossan 

 Park cattle in their later days. He " thinks that they 

 had parts near the shoulder larger than his hand of a 

 darker colour than on other parts of their bodies." 

 Mr. John Young, now living in Ardrossan, but formerly 

 coachman to Earl Hugh, the last proprietor of this herd, 

 says that " they were not pure white, but cream- 

 coloured, and wanting horns." Mr. James Willock, 

 eighty-two years of age, and residing at Saltcoats — 

 commonly called " Bailie Willock," he having been at 

 one time a bailie of the burgh of Ardrossan — also 

 remembers them well. His father took the " Nursery 

 Holme," adjoining to the Park wall on the Saltcoats 

 side, in 1811, and after his father's death he carried on 



