298 EARLY MAN IN BRITAIN. [CHAP. vm. 



over the latter continent. Its nearest living analogues 

 in the wild state, at the present time, are some of the 

 smaller oxen of Southern Asia, but it has not as yet 

 been traced, with any certainty, to any one breed of 

 wild cattle. 



The second race of cattle, or the Bos fr onto sus, is 

 allied to the Celtic short-horn, according to Nilsson, 1 

 and, according to Kutimeyer, to the urus. The skull 

 of the animal has been so modified by the development 

 of a frontal protuberance between the horncores, to 

 which the race owes its name, that, in my opinion, it 

 cannot with any certainty be assigned to either. It is 

 probably a mere link in the series by which the one 

 graduates into the other, and may be the result of a 

 cross between the two. What careful selection will 

 effect in modifying the cranial characters may be 

 gathered from the fact that the polled Galloway cattle 2 

 have lost their horns and acquired a frontal protuber- 

 ance within so short a time as eighty years. From the 

 small development of the horncores, it is probably more 

 closely allied to the Celtic short-horn than to the urus. 



The third or large domestic ox (Bos taurus) may 

 have been derived from the wild urus which inhabited 

 Europe in the Pleistocene and Prehistoric ages, and as 

 late as the sixteenth century after Christ. 3 Nevertheless, 

 from its appearing in the domestic state along with non- 

 European animals, it is probable that it was introduced 

 as a breed already in the service of man. According to 



1 Nilsson " On the Extinct and Existing Bovine Animals of Scandi- 

 navia," An. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 2d ser. iv. (1849). 



2 Letter of the Earl of Selkirk, published in Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 

 Lond. xxiii. p. 177. 



3 Dawkins, Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. Lond. xxii. 391. 



