68 THE SCOTTISPI NATURALIST 



Adaptability of Stoat. — When shooting at Grouse Lodge, 

 Strathaven, Lanarkshire, last November, I shot a Stoat ahiiost 

 identical with the one recently described in The Scottish Naturalist 

 by Dr Ritchie, as it had lost both its forelegs, which were off close 

 to its body. It was crossing a ride in a wood through heather when 

 I shot it, so I could not see its mode of progression clearly, but it 

 was moving fairly fast. It seemed in quite good condition. I 

 have seen one, killed by a dog, which had lost a foreleg on one side 

 and a hindleg on the other. — James Bartholomew, Torrance. 



The Great Extinct Ox or Urus in Peeblesshire. — Not 



long since I recorded in these pages {Scot. JVat., 1920, p. 65) an ox 

 horn, the first trace recovered from the county of Peeblesshire of 

 the prehistoric Celtic Shorthorn, a primitive breed of domesticated 

 cattle. Through the kindness of Mr William T. Blackwood, W.S., 

 I have had an opportunity of examining a second horn from the 

 county, and this I consider to indicate the former presence in 

 Peeblesshire of another extinct ox, the Urus, Bos primige7iii/s, the 

 original wild ox of Britain. Although the Urus occurred in 

 numbers in the Tweed Valley in prehistoric times, its remains 

 were first recorded from Peeblesshire only last year [Scot. Nat., 

 1921, p. 104). 



The horn was found in the summer of 192 1 by Mr Walter Potts, 

 shepherd at Talla Farm, near a moss hag on the summit of 

 Garleven (or Carleven) on Old Talla, at an elevation of about 2000 

 ft. above sea-level. There can be no doubt that originally it was 

 imbedded in the peat, for the hollow interior is even now partly 

 filled with a mass of peat. 



Unfortunately the specimen is very fragmentary, the portion 

 recovered representing only the tip of what must have been a large 

 horn; the horn layers have separated and readily flake off. The 

 length of the fragment along the outside of the curve is i ft. 

 If in., and the circumference at the wide (and broken) end is 

 7I in. It is clearly only the tip of a much larger original, for the 

 horn has here been solid, and there is no trace of the basal cavity 

 which receives the bony process or "flint" of the frontal bone. 

 The fragment is approximately round in section, and it tapers more 

 suddenly to the tip than is usual in the horns of modern cattle ; 

 both features are characteristic of the Urus. — James Ritchie. 



