Chap. III. PARK-CATTLE. 85 



wild animals. For the preservation of a uniform, character, 

 even within the same park, a certain degree of selection — that 

 is, the destruction of the dark-coloured calves — is apparently 

 necessary. 



The cattle in all the parks are white ; but, from the occasional 

 appearance of dark-coloured calves, it is extremely doubtful 

 whether the aboriginal Bos primigenius was white. The follow- 

 ing facts, however, show that there is a strong, though not 

 invariable, tendency in wild or escaped cattle, under widely 

 different conditions of life, to become white with coloured ears. 

 If the old writers Boethius and Leslie 52 can be trusted, the wild 

 cattle of Scotland were white and furnished with a great mane ; 

 but the colour of their ears is not mentioned. The primaeval 

 forest formerly extended across the whole country from Chilling- 

 ham to Hamilton, and Sir Walter Scott used to maintain that 

 the cattle still preserved in these two parks, at the two extre- 

 mities of the forest, were remnants of its original inhabitants ; 

 and this view certainly seems probable. In Wales, 53 during the 

 tenth century, some of the cattle are described as being white 

 with red ears. Four hundred cattle thus coloured were sent to 

 King John; and an early record speaks of a hundred cattle with 

 red ears having been demanded as a compensation for some 

 offence, but, if the cattle were of a dark or black colour, one 

 hundred and fifty were to be presented. The black cattle of 

 North Wales apparently belong, as we have seen, to the small 

 longifrons type : and as the alternative was offered of either 

 150 dark cattle, or 100 white cattle with red ears, we may 

 presume that the latter were the larger beasts, and probably 

 belonged to the primigenius type. Youatt has remarked that at 

 the present day, whenever cattle of the short-horn breed are 

 white, the extremities of their ears are more or less tinned with 

 red. & 



_ The cattle which have run wild on the Pampas, in Texas, and 

 in two parts of Africa, haye become of a nearly uniform dark 



62 Boethius was born in 1470 • q ■ 



'Annals and Mag. of Nat Hist • vol' tV £ ^ % ° U sllolt - horn cattle - 



iU 1839, p. 281 ; g and vol i ^ 819 p 2f £ "^ f 1 ** <**>*«**'' V- 



424 ' P " 423 ' states th -at, after long attending to 



53 Yonatt on Cattle, 1834 p 48 • £SJ?* M * Jf I™ f ° Und that white 

 i oot, p. is . cattle invariably have coloured ears. 



