CHAP, viir.] PREHISTORIC MAMMALIA IN BRITAIN, ETC. 259 



the museum at Dublin, which is sometimes taken to be 

 the result of a wound from a dart, 1 arrow, or spear, may 

 possibly have been caused by one of the sharp tynes in 

 a fight between two bucks. The peculiar incised bones 2 

 also from Legan, County Longford, which at first sight 

 look as if they had been cut by man, have been proved 

 by Dr. Carte to have resulted from "the friction of one 

 bone resting on another, caused by a movement in the 

 strata in. which they were found. 



The urus was comparatively abundant in Prehistoric 

 Britain and Ireland, and its remains are met with more 

 especially in the sub-turbary marls and in the alluvia. 

 It is proved to have been hunted by Neolithic man 

 by the bones and teeth in the Neolithic pit in Cissbury 

 Camp, explored by Mr. Ernest Willett in 1874. It 

 lived in this country at least as late as the Bronze 

 age, since its remains occur in the refuse -heap in 

 and around the pile dwelling in Barton Mere, near 

 Bury St. Edmunds. From these two isolated cases 

 of its occurrence in Britain it may be inferred that it 

 was very rare in the Neolithic and Bronze ages ; it 

 probably was exterminated before the Historic period in 

 this country. The " tauri sylvestres " of William Fitz- 

 stephen, 3 in the forests then extending round London, 

 probably did not refer to the urus, but to half-wild 

 descendants of cattle turned out, as was then the 

 custom, into the woodlands to feed, and not confined 

 within the limits of fences. 4 Mr. Darwin, however, 



1 Hart, op. cit. pi. ii. Richardson, Nat. Hist, of Gigantic Irish Deer, 

 1846, pp. 22, 25. 



2 Journ. Royal Geol. Soc. Ireland, 8th March 1866. 



3 Vita Sancti Thomce, i. p. 170, 8vo edit. E. A. Giles, Oxoniw, 



4 Dawkins on " British Fossil O^en," Part I. Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 

 Land.. 21st March 1866. 



