228 WILD WHITE CATTLE. 



principal seat of the Nevills, and at Beaurepaire, the 

 ancient 'hunting park of the Priors of Durham. The 

 cattle at this last-named place, it is said, were all 

 destroyed by the Scots in 13 15. 



Blair Athole, Perthshire. — Fifty years ago, in 

 one of the parks of this ancient seat of the Murrays, 

 Dukes of Athole, in the forest of that name, roamed 

 a herd of wild cattle, white with black points, having; 

 the ears, muzzles, and hoofs black. In 1834 this, 

 herd was sold, a portion going to Taymouth to the> 

 Marquisof Breadalbane, and the remainder to Dalkeith, 

 to the Duke of Buccleuch. Both these herds are now 

 extinct, but from them has descended in part the 

 semi-wild herd which still exists at Kilmory House, 

 Argyllshire, the property of Sir John Powlett Orde. 



Burton Constable, Yorkshire, an ancient park, 

 at present containing about 290 acres, is the property 

 of Sir F. Clifford Constable. At one time it contained 

 a herd of white cattle, as we learn from Bewick, who 

 in 1 790 wrote of them as having been then a few 

 years extinct. " Those at Burton Constable," he 

 says, " were all destroyed by a distemper a few years 

 since. They varied slightly from those at Chilling- 

 ham, having black ears and muzzles, and the tips of 

 their tails of the same colour. They were also much 

 larger, many of them weighing sixty stone, probably 

 owing to the richness of the pasturage in Holderness, 

 but generally attributed to the difference of kind 

 between those with black and white red ears, the 

 former of which they studiously endeavour to preserve. 

 The origin of this herd has only been surmised.* 



* See Storer, p. 255. 



