HORN-SHEATH OF PREHISTORIC CELTIC SHORTHORN OX 67 



peat. Through the kindness of Mr William T. Blackwood, 

 W.S., the horn was sent to the Royal Scottish Museum. 



The horn is that of the right side. It is short and 

 strongly tapered, curving slightly downwards and consider- 

 ably forwards, so that its tip lies some 7 cms. in advance of 

 the axis of its base. The base is oval, 5-6 cms. outside 

 measurement across the long or perpendicular diameter, and 

 4-2 cms. across the horizontal diameter. The total length of 

 the horn-sheath, measured along the outside of the curve, is 

 1 8- 5 cms. (about 7I inches). In colour the horn is of a dark 

 chocolate brown (what its original colour may have been it 

 is impossible to say), but, through long immersion in the 

 bog, the horny layers show a tendency to separate, and 

 where they have broken away on the outer surface they 

 reveal a pale straw colour in the deeper layers. 



In the deposits of the Roman station at Newstead were 

 found many skulls of the Celtic Shorthorn, which were 

 examined and recorded by Professor J. Cossar Ewart. These 

 skulls carried horn-cores, but no horn-sheaths were discovered. 

 The Manorhead horn exactly fitted the right horn-core of 

 the skull of one of the Roman representatives of the race, 

 so that a close estimate can be formed of the animal to which 

 the peat-bog horn belonged. The horn-core to which it 

 proved a fellow is strongly compressed in a back and front 

 direction, 4.2 cms. in its greater (perpendicular) diameter and 

 3.1 cms. in its less (horizontal) diameter. It has been broken 

 off at a length of 8 cms. The length of the skull, from 

 occipital ridge along the frontal suture to the transverse 

 suture between nasal and frontal bones, is 20 cms., the 

 breadth of the forehead below the bases of the horn-cores is 

 13-5 cms., and the transverse distance between the orbits at 

 the level of the orbital emergence of the suture between 

 lacrymal and frontal bones is 13 cms. These measurements 

 bear a close resemblance to those of the skull of a small 

 Shetland ox, recorded by Dr J. A. Smith in 1873, and 

 indicate that the animal to which the horn belonged had 

 not attained the maximum size recorded for the Celtic ox. 



