84 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



related how Sigley had more than one narrow escape from her 

 horns while feeding the cattle in the winter. 



During the summer months the cattle occupied the wild and 

 picturesque part of the demesne known as the Park Moor, in 

 fine weather frequenting the higher ground, " up by the Knight's 

 Castle and the Bow-stones Gate," as an old villager put it, but 

 on the approach of rain they invariably kept to the sheltered 

 valleys ; and more than one person in the neighbourhood 

 used to consult this natural barometer, just as the villagers of 

 Chatton do the Chillingham herd on the sides of Rosscastle at 

 the present day. In winter they were confined in a walled yard, 

 containing ample sheds, and communicating with a large paddock, 



Form of Horn prior to the Gisburne cross in 1859. 



at a short distance from the Hall. Here they were fed with hay, 

 but never had either cake or turnips. 



The bulls were steered as calves. Had the wiser policy, 

 adopted at Chillingham, of steering the animals when from two 

 to four years old, and thereby ensuring a good bull selection, 

 been practised at Lyme, the cattle might have survived till now, 

 for one cause of the decline of the herd was the retention at one 

 time of a single bull, which proved infertile.* When it was 

 necessary to secure one of the animals for any purpose a strong 

 rope with a running noose was thrown over its horns or neck, 

 and the free end of the rope passed through an iron ring, made 

 fast in a stone block in the floor of the yard. Owing to the 

 strength and ferocity of the beasts, particularly if full grown, it 

 was no safe nor easy matter to haul them up to the ring, where 

 of course they were comparatively powerless, and Arden told me 

 that, in his younger days, all the available men and boys about 



Storer, op. cit., p. 249. 





