58 THE DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS 



CHARACTERS OF THE CELTIC SHORTHORN 



What was the nature of this domestic race, which, for some 

 6000 years, was outstanding in the history and development 

 of the early peoples of Scotland ? Two sets of characters 

 infallibly single out its bones from the remains of other 

 cattle those of its skull and those of its .limbs. The skull 

 was long and narrow, more like that of a deer than of a 

 modern ox, and the forehead had a median ridge, a 

 prominent bony crest, and carried two short tapering 

 horns, about nine inches long, curved gently forwards and 

 downwards. The limbs also were deer-like in character, the 

 bones being slender in proportion to their length, as 

 compared with those of modern oxen. From the skeleton, 

 Professor Nilsson estimated that the Celtic Shorthorn "was 

 5 feet 4 inches long from the nape to the end of the rump- 

 bone, the head about i foot 4 inches, so that the whole 

 length must have been about 6 feet 8 inches." The skeleton 

 indicates that the Celtic Shorthorn was a long-bodied but 

 light and agile ox, well-fitted to protect itself by speed of 

 limb from the many beasts of prey of the Scottish forests. 



A few fortunate finds give a clue to the nature and 

 colour of its coat. On a skull found in an Irish bog and having 

 the characters of the Celtic Shorthorn, Dr John Alexander 

 Smith found part of the skin and hair still attached (Fig. 1 2). 

 The hair was of rough shaggy nature like that of Highland 

 Kyloes (Fig. 13, p. 61), and was of dark red or brownish tint. 

 Confirmatory evidence is furnished by the contents of the 

 strange masses of "bog butter" which, stored in wooden 

 kegs or wrapped in skin or birch bark, have been found 

 often at considerable depths below the surface in peat- 

 mosses in the counties of Argyll, Inverness, Banff, Moray, 

 Sutherland and in the islands of Skye and North Yell. 

 The apparent age of these butter masses suggests the 

 probability that the butter was made from the milk of the 

 Celtic Shorthorn. The butter invariably contains abundance 

 of cow-hairs, and these are always red in colour. Again, 

 Dr Joseph Anderson in 1878 discovered on a dagger of the 

 Bronze Age, found in a large sepulchral cairn at Collessie in 

 Fifeshire, a mass of agglutinated hairs, remains of the hide 

 which covered the wooden sheath of the dagger; and these 



