244 COMMON BRITISH ANIMALS 



Amongst the cattle of our fai'ms and pastures we 

 notice considerable variety of size, form and colour. 

 Very early in his history man discovered the useful 

 potentialities of these animals and pressed them into 

 his service. He has carefully bred various races, 

 some for producing quantity, others quality of milk; 

 some for the quality of their flesh as a food, and 

 others for draught. There are cattle with horns 

 and others again which are hornless, or polled. The 

 origin of all these races is lost in oblivion, though 

 it is generally believed that they are derived from 

 the snme stock as the semi-wild cattle, some of 

 which are still kept in a few English parks, and that 

 their common ancestor was the aurochs or urus 

 {Bos taurm). With this view Mr. Millais does not 

 ngree, and while he gives the name "Bos tauriis" to 

 the herds of wild cattle in our parks, he calls the 

 Aurochs ^'Bos primigenius." The reasons that he 

 gives for his view that the wild cattle are not 

 descended from the Aurochs are : 



(1) That there is no evidence that the aurochs 

 survived in England up to the period of the Roman 

 occupation, other than the story that the war chariot 

 of Boadicea was drawn by a pair of aurochs, though 

 the bones of this animal have been found together 

 with bronze celts in Scotland. 



(2) That whereas the heads of the existing wild 

 bull and wild cow are very easily distinguished, the 

 fossil heads of the aurochs betray no evidence of 

 sex. 



(3) The only horn of the aurochs which has as 

 yet been discovered in England has corrugations 



