230 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 



We often lose sight of the social conditions of life in past days 

 in discussing the history of our cattle breeds. The country was 

 unenclosed, and cattle was the medium bv which oenalties were 

 paid and gifts made. Cattle were also raided and lifted as 

 opportunity occurred. lu fact, from Anglo-Saxon laws we learn 

 that special care was taken in regard to certain goods where the 

 presumption of theft was particularly strong, such goods being 

 cattle and old clothes. Now, under the conditions of raidinsf, 

 gift-giving, and penalty-paying, cattle must have been easily 

 transported, and be regarded rather as tame than wild beasts. In 

 medireval stories of the Bubali or Tauri sylvestres (Fig. 4), we read of 





Fig. 4. — Hunting the Urus. 



them as wild beasts. Bubalus would be used for cattle that had 

 escaped, i.e., run wild. Uos camvorum, huhalus nemorum. Were 

 the " bubali" cattle in our sense of the word 1 This is a point I 

 will discuss further on in my paper. But '* wild beasts " is a 

 common expression for cattle under certain conditions. "We say 

 that cattle on ranches are wild because they roam, feed, and breed 

 uncontrolled : but thev are still domesticated cattle, and not un- 



