74 The Irish Naturalist. July, 



Irish zoological poem in support of his contention. Mr. 

 Eugene Curry, the translator of the poem, believes it to 

 be as old as the ninth century, and at that time certainly 

 the wild oxen, if they ever did exist in Ireland, must have 

 been long since extinct. The interest of the poem lies in 

 the fact that it describes how Cormac Mac Art, the monarch 

 of Erin, consented to liberate his prisoner Finn Mac Cum- 

 haill when a ransom of two of every wild animal of Ireland 

 were brought before him on the green of Tara. The poem 

 relates the sequence of this offer, and among the wild 

 animals are mentioned two wild oxen from the Burren.^ 

 This place in County Clare is as inhospitable and wild 

 as any in Ireland, and would be just the place where herds of 

 wild cattle might once have lived. But in that case wild 

 cattle must have had a wider range in still more remote 

 times. They would have existed in every suitable district 

 in Ireland and have left some trace of their former presence 

 in the more ancient deposits, where they are, as far as we 

 know, completely absent. Hence I venture to think that 

 without much stronger evidence we are not entitled to 

 conclude that wild cattle inhabited Ireland. I believe that 

 the small Celtic breed (which is known as Bos longifrons or 

 brachyceros) was brought to Ireland long ago, certainh^ 

 in pre-Christian times by the early settlers, and that no 

 wild race ever inhabited the country. There is no doubt 

 that wild cattle existed in Great Britain, as I have already 

 pointed out. 



Types of cattle similar to those living in Ireland in those 

 remote times live in Great Britain and the continent of 

 Europe during at any rate, part of the Stone Age. It has 

 been argued that this small breed must have been domesti- 

 cated in Europe from a wild ancestor, but we are specially 

 indebted to the Swiss zoologist, Dr. Duerst, whose brilliant 

 researches have traced the origin of the breed to another 

 continent. Nearly 25 years ago he showed that the short- 

 horn cattle of Asia Minor and of north and east Africa 

 . undoubtedly belong to the brachyceros [=longifrons) 



~ Wilde, W. : On the unmanufactured animal remains belonging to the 

 Academy. Proc. R. Irish Academy, vol. vi\, i860. 



