by nearly all palæontologists as distinct species; and it would not be reasonable to change their denomination simply because they are now found to be the parents of several domesticated races. But what is of most importance for us, as showing that they deserve to be ranked as species, is that they co-existed in different parts of Europe during the same period, and yet kept distinct. Their domesticated descendants, on the other hand, if not separated, cross with the utmost freedom and become commingled. The several European breeds have so often been crossed, both intentionally and unintentionally, that, if any sterility ensued from such unions, it would certainly have been detected. As zebus inhabit a distant and much hotter region, and as they differ in so many characters from our European cattle, I have taken pains to ascertain whether the two forms are fertile when crossed. The late Lord Powis imported some zebus and crossed them with common cattle in Shropshire; and I was assured by his steward that the cross-bred animals were perfectly fertile with both parent-stocks. Mr. Blyth informs me that in India hybrids, with various proportions of either blood, are quite fertile; and this can hardly fail to be known, for in some districts[[193]] the two species are allowed to breed freely together. Most of the cattle which were first introduced into Tasmania were humped, so that at one time thousands of crossed animals existed there; and Mr. B. O'Neile Wilson, M.A., writes to me from Tasmania that he has never heard of any sterility having been observed. He himself formerly possessed a herd of such crossed cattle, and all were perfectly fertile; so much so, that he cannot remember even a single cow failing to calve. These several facts afford an important confirmation of the Pallasian doctrine that the descendants of species which when first domesticated would if crossed probably have been in some degree sterile, become perfectly fertile after a long course of domestication. In a future chapter we shall see that this doctrine throws much light on the difficult subject of Hybridism.
I have alluded to the cattle in Chillingham Park, which, according to Rütimeyer, have been very little changed from the Bos primigenius type. This park is so ancient that it is
referred to in a record of the year 1220. The cattle in their instincts and habits are truly wild. They are white, with the inside of the ears reddish-brown, eyes rimmed with black, muzzles brown, hoofs black, and horns white tipped with black. Within a period of thirty-three years about a dozen calves were born with "brown and blue spots upon the cheeks or necks; but these, together with any defective animals, were always destroyed." According to Bewick, about the year 1770 some calves appeared with black ears; but these were also destroyed by the keeper, and black ears have not since reappeared. The wild white cattle in the Duke of Hamilton's park, where I have heard of the birth of a black calf, are said by Lord Tankerville to be inferior to those at Chillingham. The cattle kept until the year 1780 by the Duke of Queensberry, but now extinct, had their ears, muzzle, and orbits of the eyes black. Those which have existed from time immemorial at Chartley; closely resemble the cattle at Chillingham, but are larger, "with some small difference in the colour of the ears." "They frequently tend to become entirely black; and a singular superstition prevails in the vicinity that, when a black calf is born, some calamity impends over the noble house of Ferrers. All the black calves are destroyed." The cattle at Burton Constable in Yorkshire, now extinct, had ears, muzzle, and the tip of the tail black. Those at Gisburne, also in Yorkshire, are said by Bewick to have been sometimes without dark muzzles, with the inside alone of the ears brown; and they are elsewhere said to have been low in stature and hornless.[[194]]
The several above-specified differences in the park-cattle, slight though they be, are worth recording, as they show that animals living nearly in a state of nature, and exposed to nearly uniform conditions, if not allowed to roam freely and to cross with other herds, do not keep as uniform as truly
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 following 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[[195]] 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 primæval forest formerly extended across the whole country from Chillingham to Hamilton, and Sir Walter Scott used to maintain that the cattle still preserved in these two parks, at the two extremities of the forest, were remnants of its original inhabitants; and this view certainly seems probable. In Wales,[[196]] 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 tinged with red.
The cattle which have run wild on the Pampas, in Texas, and in two parts of Africa, have become of a nearly uniform dark
brownish-red.[[197]] On the Ladrone Islands, in the Pacific Ocean, immense herds of cattle, which were wild in the year 1741, are described as "milk-white, except their ears, which are generally black."[[198]] The Falkland Islands, situated far south, with all the conditions of life as different as it is possible to conceive from those of the Ladrones, offer a more interesting case. Cattle have run wild there during eighty or ninety years; and in the southern districts the animals are mostly white, with their feet, or whole heads, or only their ears black; but my informant, Admiral Sulivan,[[199]] who long resided on these islands, does not believe that they are ever purely white. So that in these two archipelagos we see that the cattle tend to become white with coloured ears. In other parts of the Falkland Islands, other colours prevail: near Port Pleasant brown is the common tint; round Mount Usborne, about half the animals in some of the herds were lead or mouse-coloured, which elsewhere is an unusual tint. These latter cattle, though generally inhabiting high land, breed about a month earlier than the other cattle; and this circumstance would aid in keeping them distinct and in perpetuating this peculiar colour. It is worth recalling to mind that blue or lead-coloured marks have occasionally appeared on the white cattle of Chillingham. So plainly different were the colours of the wild herds in different parts of the Falkland Islands, that in hunting them, as Admiral Sulivan informs me, white spots in one district, and dark spots in another district, were always looked out for on the distant hills. In the intermediate districts intermediate colours prevailed. Whatever the cause may be, this tendency in the wild cattle of the Falkland Islands, which are all descended from a few brought from La Plata, to break up into herds of three different colours, is an interesting fact.
Returning to the several British breeds, the conspicuous difference in general appearance between Short-horns, Long-horns (now rarely seen), Herefords, Highland cattle, Alderneys, &c., must be familiar to every one. A large part of the
difference, no doubt, may be due to descent from primordially distinct species; but we may feel sure that there has been in addition a considerable amount of variation. Even during the Neolithic period, the domestic cattle were not actually identical with the aboriginal species. Within recent times most of the breeds have been modified by careful and methodical selection. How strongly the characters thus acquired are inherited, may be inferred from the prices realised by the improved breeds; even at the first sale of Colling's Short-horns, eleven bulls reached an average of 214l., and lately Short-horn bulls have been sold for a thousand guineas, and have been exported to all quarters of the world.