Page:The Evolution of British Cattle.djvu/16

 ancestors of the wild ones, by so me lucky chance, had escaped the thrall of man. The problem of tracing the ancestry of the whole was thus narrowed down to tracing that of a very few, and not only from their very picturesqueness, and the fact that they had never been tamed, but also because they had been referred to more than once in early writings, the wild white cattle afforded the most attractive clue.

The first step into the past was obvious and clear: it was to a spirited description of the Chillingham herd, written towards the end of the eighteenth century by Mr. Bailey, of Chillingham, and printed by George Culley in his "Observations on Live Stock": —

"The wild breed, from being untameable, can only be kept within walls or good fences; consequently very few of them are now to be met with, except in the parks of some gentlemen, who keep them for ornament, and as a curiosity; those I have seen are at Chillingham Castle, in Northumberland, a seat belonging to the Earl of Tankerville. Their colour is invariably of a creamy white; muzzle black; the whole of the inside of the ear, and about one-third of the outside, from the tips downwards, red; horns white, with black tips, very fine, and bent upwards; some of the bulls have a thin upright mane, about an inch and a half or two inches long. The weight of the oxen is from 35 to 45 St., and the