CHAP, i WILD CATTLE. 15 



connecting link, as it were, between the wild animals which have 

 become extinct in this country within historic times, and those which 

 may still be classed amongst omferce natures. 



The race is undoubtedly of great antiquity, but whether it is 

 descended, as some affirm, from the aboriginal wild breed of the 

 British forests the Urus of Csesar (Bos primigenius) or whether, 

 as others assert, it has at some period long remote been imported from 

 abroad and since become feral, are questions upon which, at present, 

 considerable difference of opinion prevails. The weight of scientific 

 opinion, however, seems to favour the view that these wild white 

 cattle were descended from the Urus, either by direct descent through 

 wild animals from the wild bull, or less directly through domesticated 

 cattle deriving their blood principally from him. 



That the Urus existed in Britain in prehistoric times, and was 

 contemporaneous with man of the Paleolithic or older Stone Age, 

 must be admitted. In the fluviatile deposits of the Thames, and in 

 some other places, the remains of the two have been found together, 

 and instances have been recorded in which the remains of the Urus 

 have been found contemporaneous with man of the Neolithic or later 

 Stone Age. 



In these and other instances which have been recorded, the animals 

 whose remains were found were, in all probability, wild, and not 

 domesticated. Indeed, no discoveries have yet been made which lead 

 to the supposition that the Urus was domesticated in Britain in pre- 

 historic times ; while Bos longifrons, the " Celtic short-horn," as it 

 has been termed, was everywhere subjugated and used by man. The 

 latter was the only Ox in Britain in the time of the Romans, and 

 afforded sustenance to their legions. From it the small dark breeds of 

 Wales and Scotland are descended ; and it survived until recently in 

 Cornwall, Cumberland, and Westmoreland. The remains of Bos 

 longifrons are plentiful in the English fens, and it- seems to have 

 afforded a staple article of food in the Neolithic Age. 



Mr. Sydney Skertchley found immense numbers of the bones of this 

 animal in what are probably the remains of a Stone- Age lake-dwelling 

 at Crowland, near Peterborough. At the great flint-implement manu- 

 factory at Grimes Graves, near Brandon, Suffolk, the remains of this 

 animal are very plentiful, and are chiefly those of young calves. It would 

 appear from this that a principal article in the food of these people 

 was milk, and therefore they could not afford to keep the calves, which 

 must have consumed a large portion of what would otherwise have 

 been available for the use of the household. 



Before leaving this branch of the subject it will be useful to record 

 the opinion of an eminent and trustworthy authority, who, writing to 

 us in the summer of 1891, says : " My own acquaintance with modern 

 British breeds of cattle leads me to incline to the belief that most of 

 them have sprung from an ancient British race, or perhaps from two 

 distinct races which existed in the British Isles before the Saxons 

 came, mixed at various times with cattle brought over by different 

 races of men. Some breeds the Chillingham, the Welsh, the West 



