. Mammals of other lands;. Mammals. i86 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD. PhM by W. f. Dandc ENGLISH PARK BULL The similarity in shape to the best-bred modern shorthorns is obvious BRITISH PARK-CATTLE, AND THE AUROCHS The so-called " Wild Cattle " found in the parks of Chillingham and Chartley, as well as in Lord Leigh's park at Lyme, and in that of the Duke of Hamilton at Cadzow Castle, Scotland, are probably not the descendants of an indigenous wild race. It is not without reluctance that the belief in their wild descent has been abandoned. But the evidence seems fairly conclusive a
. Mammals of other lands;. Mammals. i86 THE LIVING ANIMALS OF THE WORLD. PhM by W. f. Dandc ENGLISH PARK BULL The similarity in shape to the best-bred modern shorthorns is obvious BRITISH PARK-CATTLE, AND THE AUROCHS The so-called " Wild Cattle " found in the parks of Chillingham and Chartley, as well as in Lord Leigh's park at Lyme, and in that of the Duke of Hamilton at Cadzow Castle, Scotland, are probably not the descendants of an indigenous wild race. It is not without reluctance that the belief in their wild descent has been abandoned. But the evidence seems fairly conclusive as to the antiquity of these white cattle, regarded as a primitive breed, and of the unlikelihood of their being survivors of a truly wild stock. They are almost identical in many points with the best breeds of modern cattle, and probably represent the finest type possessed by the ancient inhabitants of these islands. But they are far smaller than the original Wild Ox, or Aurochs, the ancestor of our domestic breeds. The skulls of these large wild oxen, which still survived in the Black Forest in Caesar's time, have been dug up in many parts of England, especially in the Thames Valley, and may be seen at the Natural History Museum. The remains of the extinct wild ox, the Bos ttrus of the Romans, show that, if not so large as an elephant, as Ca;sar heard, its size was gigantic, reckoned by any modern cattle standard whatever. It probably stood 6 feet high at the shoulder, and there is every reason to believe that it was the progenitor of the modern race of domestic cattle in Europe. It seems certain that the Chartley Park herd did once run wild in Needwood Forest; but so do the Italian buffaloes in the Maremma, and the Spanish bulls on the plains of Andalusia. Those at Chartley have been kept in the park, which is very wild and remote, so long that they have gradually lost many of the attributes of domestica- tion. This is even more marked in the case of Lord Tankervill's white c
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