REFERENCE TO WILD OX 



whose food consisted of milk, cheese and flesh. This 

 inference is drawn from the curious fact that the remains 

 of calves are particularly abundant ; it is supposed that 

 the calves were at least killed if not eaten, the killing off 

 of the calves being a necessity to prevent their suckling 

 too long. Beef is suggested from the rinding of the 

 skull of an urus transfixed by a Neolithic flint weapon. 

 In later periods than the Neolithic, these fine cattle 

 " tossed high their manes of snow " over the whole 

 country, and approached even the gates of London 

 so lately as the year 1174. Their occurrence as wild 

 animals even in the later days of mediaeval times is 

 testified to by references in literature. Thus James 

 the First of Scotland in The Kingis Quhair writes of 

 " The bugill drawar by his hornis grete," by which, 

 however, he may mean a domestic ox : less doubtful is 

 the line of Dunbar in The Thrissill and the Rois, who 

 makes dame Nature order the wild ox thus 



And lat no bowgle, with his busteous hornis, 

 The meik pluch-ox oppress, for all his pryde, 

 Bot in the yok go peciable him besyd. 



The contrasting of the Bowgle (from Latin Buculus) 

 with the meek plough ox is clearly suggestive of a 

 wild form at most imperfectly domesticated. It has 

 been pointed out that wild traits survive in the oxen 

 of Chillingham and elsewhere. 



That the bulls are fierce and that it is unwise to go 

 too near them is not of course an argument in this 

 direction, though it is a fact. We know well enough 

 that the most flagrantly domestic bull of the common 

 farmyard is not the beast to tackle from the wrong 

 side of the gate. A feature born of wildness is the 

 way of feeding of the Chillingham cattle. They do 

 not browse openly like an ox of the pasture, but feed 

 as it were by stealth and at night or in the evening. 

 Then, too, the cows when they calve propagate in the 



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