WHITE CATTLE : AN INQUIRY INTO THEIR ORIGIN, ETC. 



245 



Practically we can entireh'- ignore Bos primigenius as a factor in 

 the history of early British cattle, especially of white breeds. 



On the other hand. Bos longifrons may have had some influence 

 on our white breeds, though their present colour and horns differ 

 from it. We And, according to Professor Hughes, at stations 

 where the Romans had- long resided an improved form of ox 

 appears, a cross with an upturned-horn variety, which could 

 only have been the oruinary Roman breed, imported by 

 the conquerors for various purposes. These mav have been 



Fig. 17. — Romano-British, with horn-cores showing a tendency to turn up. 

 Reach Fen, Cambridge. Woodwardian Museum. 



a white race, more probably a dark one. Among the Celtic 

 Shorthorns there were no parti-coloured animals, nor were 

 they amongst those of the Roman type. Native British coins 

 also show cattle, but never of the Urus type; they either have the 

 conventional thick stumpy horns of a bull or those of the Celtic 

 Shorthorn, and, when copying Roman productions, the lyre-shaped 

 horns and dewlap of Roman cattle. A writer of last century in the 

 tenth volume of the •' Archseologia" tells us as regards "The Wild 

 Bull." that for this creature we should see the coins of Cunobelin. 



