including one "free martin," which here simply means a barren cow, and not one born at the same time as a bull-calf, for two at a birth is unknown in the wild herd. In Cole's time the herd numbered over one hundred and twenty, and in October, 1872, the herd was said to contain between sixty and seventy head.* Some of the ground has since been shut off, their run being now about 1100 acres, though they never go within two hundred feet or more of the top of the bill. Two years ago they numbered seventy, but a bad winter (? 1875-6) reduced them. An old cow had died a few days before my visit, from having been strained in a bog when weak after calving in the bad weather, and having been hurt by another beast's horn. The two youngest calves were about five weeks old. Mickie has been at Chillingham twenty-five years, the last nineteen of which he has been park-keeper, and he declares he has never known a calf born coloured.f The cattle feed much at night. One bull whom they had tried with oil-cake when in the hovel had eaten it readily ; they do not appear to care for turnip, as they never eat what is put in the hovel in winter for the deer. Mickie has known as many as fourteen calves born in a twelvemonth, and as few as eight. This must, of course, depend on the number of adult cows in the herd at the time ; but these numbers would, 1 think (allowing for deaths among the calves, of which he says there are not many), give a calf every twelvemonth to every fertile cow above two years old. None of the cattle here have any black on the fetlocks.
Hamilton. — No orders to visit the High Parks at Hamilton, Lanarkshire, the seat of the Duke of Hamilton, % were given during the summer of 1877, on account of the game, but on my promise of good behaviour the Duke's Factor kindly gave me one for July 10th. Half a mile, or rather more, from the park-gate brings one to the "old oaks of Caledon," which are, I regret to say, rather on their last legs, and there are no young trees to take their places. Keeping along the road, I presently found, nearly in the corner of their run, some of the cattle, which turned out to be the herd of bulls and stots, numbering eighteen, which are kept
See 'The Field,' 30th November, 1872, p. 529.
"Within a period of thirty-three years about a dozen calves were born with brown and blue spots on the cheek and necks." Darwin's 'Animals and Plants under Domestication.'—Ed.
It is presumed that this is the same park which in some of the older records of wild white cattle is called Cadzow.—Ed.
