ORIGIN OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS 



225 



was hunted by Caesar and his followers under the name of 

 aurochs, or urus, as it was called by Charlemagne in the ninth 

 century. (It was certainly encountered by the first crusaders 

 and is known to have lingered in the neighborhood of Worms 

 as late as the twelfth century.) 



This was the great European wild ox, and it is from him that 

 all our larger breeds of common cattle are universally supposed 

 to have descended. Contemporaneous with him one or more 

 smaller and more slender races x inhabited the same regions, 

 especially toward the west. It is from these latter that the Jersey 

 and its nearest relative, the Guernsey, are supposed to have 

 descended, an assumption resting, of course, upon structural 

 considerations rather than upon direct historic evidence. 



A curious circumstance connects these ancient times with the 

 living present. There are now in the hunting parks of several 

 of the great estates of England herds of wild white cattle, notably 

 those at Chillingham in southern Scotland and Chartley and 

 Cadzow in northern England. 



These herds are the direct descendants of the original wild 

 cattle confined in these parks along with other game some eight 

 or nine hundred years ago and perhaps longer ; indeed, authentic 

 mention is made of the Chillingham cattle in 1220, thus over- 

 lapping the known last days of the aurochs, with which they are 

 supposed to be identical, though much reduced in size by reason 

 of close confinement to the northern limits of their natural range^ 



All these so-called " park cattle " or V wild white cattle " are 

 somewhat smaller than the larger breeds of domestic cattle of 

 to-day. They are of a uniform dirty white color except the ears, 

 muzzles, switch of the tail, and the lower portions of the legs, 

 which range from brown to a brownish red. They are generally 

 horned and in every way resemble common cattle except as to 



1 These are variously called Bos longifrons, Bos frontostts, etc., from the 

 different specimens that have been found of these early " deerlike " forms of 

 the cattle kind. It is significant that none of these cattle are found back of the 

 later stone age. 



