1923. SCHARFF — On the Origin of the Irish Cattle. 73 



hrachyceros had already been applied to quite another 

 kind of ox, so that Prof. Owen changed it to longifrons. 

 The same author's statement that skulls of this small 

 form of ox had been found in the shell-marl of Ireland 

 together with the remains of the Irish Elk lacks confirma- 

 tion, and seems to me extremely improbable. In the 

 extensive Irish peat deposits it occurs frequently, but 

 they are of much more recent date than the undertying 

 shell-marl.^ 



That the small Celtic breed of oxen was the only domesti- 

 cated race existing in England and Scotland at the time of 

 the Roman invasion, is the view supported by Prof. Boyd 

 Dawkins. ^ As the result of examining the bones of animals 

 from many Roman sites he concluded that this breed 

 abounded in Great Britain during the Roman occupation 

 to the exclusion of the larger breeds. But as we have 

 noted from Meek and Gray's researches, a larger wild breed 

 appears to have lived in northern England in Roman times. 

 That a small breed was the only kind of cattle occurring 

 in early Christian times and during the preceding ages in 

 Ireland, is proved by the bones and teeth of oxen found in 

 Irish caves. > And from the fact that in the ancient Irish 

 Brehon Laws the measurement of a cow is given as twenty 

 hands in girth, it would appear that the usual size of cattle 

 was then much smaller than it is now. No remains of 

 large cattle have ever been met with in the older Irish 

 cave deposits. All the bones and teeth belong to a small 

 breed similar to but somewhat smaller and more slender 

 than the existing Kerry race. The view that wild oxen 

 ever inhabited Ireland is not supported by palseontological 

 evidence, and Prof. Owen must have been misinformed 

 when he stated that ox remains had been found together 

 with those of the Irish Elk. The opinion that wild oxen 

 once roamed about the plains of Ireland is founded mainly 

 on the testimonv of Sir William Wilde who quoted a curious 



5 Owen, Richard : A history of British fossil mammals and birds. 

 London, 1846. 



* Dawkins, W. Boyd : British Pleistocene Alammalia. Palaeontographical 

 Society, London, 1878. 



