II. 2 



CATTLE IN SCOTLAND 



THE farmer's family, according to Hesiod, one of the 

 earliest writers on agriculture, consisted of the Husband, the 

 Wife and the Ox, the Minister of Ceres. The ox was the 

 "constant Companion of Man in the Labours of the Field," 

 as well as the mainstay of the food supply of the early 

 communities. On account of these particular uses to which 

 cattle were put, the influence of man has had a less striking 

 effect on the outer aspect of oxen than on that of the wool- 

 bearing sheep. Yet for us the ox gains an additional interest 

 in that at an early stage the domestication of oxen was 

 probably more intimately connected with Scotland than that 

 of sheep. For there can be no doubt that when Neolithic 

 man reached these lands the forests still sheltered herds of 

 wild cattle which here or elsewhere formed a nucleus of our 

 domesticated breeds. 



THE NATIVE WILD CATTLE OF SCOTLAND 



In the time of the Ice Age, perhaps even of the earlier 

 Forest Bed of Norfolk, there appeared an Ox of large size, 

 the great Urus (Bos taurus primigenius] (Figs, to and 11, 

 pp. 50 and 53), which before the close of the Ice Age had 

 spread from the north of Scandinavia to Sicily and from the 

 Siberian Steppes to the west of Scotland. For many centuries, 

 under climatic conditions of great diversity, it inhabited the 

 Scottish plains. When the snows of the Ice Age disappeared 

 from the Lowlands in one of the mild interludes which 

 broke the severity of an Arctic climate, and a coat of 

 verdure spread over the plains, the Urus made one of the 

 small band of animals which ventured into the southern 

 counties of Scotland in quest of new pastures. Its earliest 

 Scottish remains have been found in interglacial deposits near 



