36o BRITISH MAMMALS 



however, there is an easy oscillation between foxy-red and black. 

 Even in our own order we may not only see the oscillation 

 between red and black in the hair of the chimpanzee on the one 

 hand, and the orang utan on the other, but gorillas have a 

 tendency to remain undecided between the two tints in the colour 

 of their coat, while in primitive man there was unquestionably a 

 black-haired type and a red-haired type ; reddish hair even crops 

 out in the Congo pygmies. It is not only possible, therefore, 

 that there were many local breeds of urus which may have been 

 black- or red-haired (in contradistinction to the dun-colour of 

 the southern form), but there was a tendency in these same 

 animals to produce white examples which were not albinos, and 

 which retained a few marks of dark colour about them on the 

 muzzle, ears, nose, and feet. These dark marks on the white 

 forehead were sometimes black and sometimes red. On the 

 other hand, in the Mauritanian ox these same places on muzzle, 

 ears, nose, and edge of hoofs are often white. 



In the British Islands the urus made its appearance in the 

 Pleistocene period, and seems by its rivalry in size and strength 

 to have made life impossible for the bison. The range of the 

 urus in Britain extended far up into the north of Scotland. 

 The urus seems never to have reached Ireland in its original 

 form, only in that of its modified and perhaps partially domesti- 

 cated descendants, the Keltic short horn (Soj taurus longifrons). 

 In Britain the urus certainly lived as a huge wild animal well 

 into Neolithic times, and may even not have become wholly 

 extinct in Scotland until about the beginning of the Christian era. 

 Wild bulls and wild cattle, generally identical with or extremely 

 like the few herds that now survive under the rather mislead- 

 ing name of " Chillingham " or park cattle, were probably 

 of mixed origin. Some of them, such as the Cadzow breed of 

 Western Scotland, may be directly descended from one variety 

 of the wild urus, restricted space having brought about in-and-in 

 breeding and a great decrease of size. Elsewhere the breeds 

 of wild cattle (which are constantly mentioned by Norman 

 writers as existing in Epping Forest and other districts con- 



