
WHITE CATTLE: AN INQUIRY INTO THEIR ORIGIN, ETC. 259 
outer portions, while occasionally almost black beasts are seen, the 
darker colouring being due to a more or less distant cross with 
the Buffalo,! which is also numerous in parts of Roumania. But, 
putting occasional colour-sports to one side, the colour of the 
Roumanian cattle is white, and white only. The hair is coarse and 
long, as befits a beast that may have to withstand the rigours of 
the Roumanian winter in the somewhat ramshackle wooden 
puildings which do duty for byres on most of the farms, the 
holdings of peasant-proprietors or peasant-tenants. It is shed 
freely for the summer, when equally great heat prevails ; but the 
coat is always thick, coarse, and somewhat bristly, thus offering 
very necessary protection against the multifarious noxious insects 
which afflict cattle in this country. Large, heavy, spreading 
horns adorn the, comparatively speaking, light-formed heads ; the 
eye is bright and black, the ears large and hairy. The general 
build is heavy and massive, resembling more our Herefords than 
any other British breed. They are big-boned cattle, standing on 
large and spreading heavily-hoofed feet, varying, however, in size, 
according to the districts—whether poor or rich—from whence 
they come. Thus, in the arid and sparsely-cultivated wastes of 
the Dobruja they run quite small, whilst on the rich plains on 
the other side of the Danube the bigger beasts are reared. They 
are slow in arriving at maturity, but regular and fertile breeders, 
the cows giving an abundance of rich creamy milk. Throughout 
the summer they are pastured on the lower-lying, somewhat 
marshy lands, which begirt the streams and rivers, and are housed 
in barns and yards throughout the winter.” 
Our evidence, so far as to the origin of our white cattle, may 
be thus summed up :— 
1. The ox common and universal throughout Britain, and we 
may add Ireland, at the time of the Roman Conquest 
was the Celtic Shorthorn, the Bos longifrons of Owen. 
9. This animal was small and dark-coloured, and such we find 
to be the existing type of animals in the regions to 
which the Celts were ultimately driven and confined. 
ee 
1This is doubted by experts, and Mr. Carnegie in a subsequent 
communication to the Live Stock Journal, acknowledges that he has no 
personal knowledge of such a cross. 
