Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/307

Rh apart from the cows and young calves. By this plan the cows avoid being constantly worried by the bulls, and it insures the calves being born at a suitable season of the year. The stots are inclined to be leggy, while the bulls appeared to be more like shorthorns than in either of the other herds. Keeping along the road one comes to the cows' inclosure, separated by a space of fifty yards or so from the other. Some little way further on, the cows, numbering twenty-five, gradually made their appearance from behind some ground on the right, feeding down wind, as the bulls had done, in consequence no doubt of the gale of wind which was blowing, with driving rain. Presently, as I shifted my position a little, three or four of the cows saw me, and stood still looking at me. One or two of them lowed, and in a few seconds, from behind the rising ground whence the cows had appeared there galloped down thirteen calves, single file, and for the most part close together, and joined the cows, making the grand total here fifty-six. The calves were born during May and June. So far as I could make out with the glass, the outsides of the ears of several of the cows are white; in the majority of the herd the whole muzzle (the hair round the naked part of the nose, and the under jaw to correspond) is black. This dissimilarity was accounted for by the fact that the herd having got rather low, they had lately been keeping every calf to get up the numbers again. All the stots were rather defective in their "points." Some, perhaps all, of the herd are splashed with black about the fetlocks. The cattle-keeper's wife told me that there were three black calves born this year, "without a white hair about them."* The old lady also said that she had "heard tell of coloured ones and spotted ones, just like a common cow;" and that "there are mostly about three black ones born every year," which very soon find their way to the butcher's. The wild cows, here especially, appeared to have a greater development of muscle on the crest of the neck, just in front of the withers, than any tame cows I have noticed. Some years ago some (bulls, I be- lieve) were polled, but now they all have horns, which first go out sideways, and then up, the tips coming slightly inwards, and not having the length or peculiar turn backwards of the Chillingham cattle. They all appear to be somewhat broken-haired, as at Chil-

The cattle-keeper, whom I saw afterwards, said there were as many as five black ones this year. Whether the discrepancy is to be explained by two calves having some white about them I did not ascertain.