70 The Irish Naturalist. July, 



examination of such ancient household rubbish heaps. 

 Their study has enabled experts to date approximately 

 the various crannogs. Now among these finds there were 

 a large number of skulls of cattle, and we are thus able to 

 determine what breeds existed in Ireland in early Christian 

 times. A particularly large horde of skulls and bones of 

 domestic animals was discovered in the bog of Lagore, 

 near Dunshaughlin, Co, Meath. They were in what was 

 undoubtedly the remains of a crannog of over 500 feet in 

 circumference. This crannog dates from the loth century, 

 and Sir William Wilde describes the skulls as belonging to 

 the straight-horned, curved-horned, short-horned and horn- 

 less types. Two of the skulls bear the character of the 

 ancient large primigenius race. As no representative 

 of this breed has ever been found in earlier Irish deposits, 

 we must assume that in the loth centur}^ we already had 

 breeds of cattle in Ireland which were imported from Great 

 Britain and abroad. 



A good deal of confusion exists among the various 

 writers as to the term " short-horn " and " long-horn." 

 Sir William W^ilde describes the Kerry breed as having 

 rather short horns and so does Youatt, while Hughes 

 considers it as the most t3^pical example of the Celtic short- 

 horn. Lydekker, on the other hand; describes the horn of 

 the Kerry as being fine and long, and states that the Kerry 

 is related to the " Welsh runt " as well as the Highland cattle 

 of Scotland which have relatively long horns. And yet 

 we are told that the modern shorthorn is a breed entirely 

 distinct from the Kerry. The confusion in terminology 

 arises from the fact that the length or shortness of the 

 horn are only utilized as convenient terms of description. 

 It is not so much in terms of measurement as relatively to 

 the size of the animal that the horns may be described as 

 either long or short. The horns of the Highland cattle 

 only appear to be long relatively to the size of their bodies, 

 and it is more in the general conformation that these and 

 the Welsh and Irish breeds are related to one another.' The 

 breed known as the " shorthorn " seems to be a compara- 



^ Lydekker, R. : The ox and its kindred. London, 1912. 



