240 WILD WHITE CATTLE. 



them shot.* There is no clue to their origin, and 

 this is the only instance yet known of a wild herd in 

 the west of England. 



*Lyme Park, Cheshire, was originally part of the 

 Forest of Macclesfield, and was granted by Richard 

 II. toward the close of the fourteenth century to Sir 

 Piers Legh, who was standard-bearer to the Black 

 Prince at the Battle of Cresci. It has ever since 

 remained in the family of Legh, and the breed of 

 cattle still preserved there is thought to be a,t least 

 as ancient as the park itself Hansall, in his " His- 

 tory of Cheshire" (1817), says : 



" In Lyme Park, which contains about one thousand 

 Cheshire acres, is a herd of upwards of twenty wild 

 cattle, similar to those in Lord Tankerville's park at 

 Chillingham: — chiefly Avhite with red ears. They 

 have been in the park from time immemorial, and 

 tradition says they are indigenous. In the summer 

 season they assemble in the high lands, and in the 

 winter they shelter in the park woods. They were 

 formerly fed with holly branches, with which trees the 

 park abounded ; but these being destroyed, hay is 

 now substituted. Two of the cows are shot annually 

 for beef" 



Thirty years ago this herd, it is said, numbered as 

 many as thirty-four head. Then it gradually 

 dwindled untU in August, 1875, when Mr. Storer 

 visited Lyme, there were only four animals surviving 

 — a three-year-old bull, a cow, a three-year-old heifer 

 in calf, and a young calf In two years' time there 



* Shirley, " English Deer Parks," p. 99. 



