MODERN CELTIC RACES OF CATTLE. 7 



The Somersetshire variety is much larger than the North 

 Devon breed; and the cattle of the South Hams are 

 larger still, and evidently still more nearly related to 

 the Sussex : yet they all belong to the same distinctive 

 class. Differences of pasture and of climate have caused 

 some divergencies; crossing with other breeds has 

 perhaps contributed still more to produce them. It 

 would seem that in North Devon, which the Brit-Welsh 

 held latest against their English foes, the blood of their 

 ox, the longifrons, is to be found most — though I think 

 not altogether — pure ; for it is difficult to believe that so 

 small and deer-like an animal could, upon cold and sparse 

 pastures, with an inclement climate, and with very 

 ordinary attention from man, as was for ages the case, 

 have grown into the small, yet larger, North Devon, 

 unless it had received some cross. One circumstance 

 only can I suggest as the cause of the uniformity, vary- 

 ing as it does in some particulars, of the peculiar and 

 distinctive domestic cattle of the southern counties. 

 These counties belonged to a different tribe of men from 

 those who possessed the rest of Britain — namely, 

 the Belgae. They were fresher from the East than 

 the Celts, and, just as the Belgae pressed on the rear 

 of the Celts as far as the Seine, so they followed 

 them into Britain and took possession of the " Pars 

 maritima," or southern counties.* The unsettled con- 

 dition of the country at the time of Caesar's invasion 

 was probably due to the struggle then going on 

 between Celts and Belgae. If, like other nomadic 

 peoples, they brought with them their herds and 

 flocks, might we not expect to find in these counties, 

 from Kent to Cornwall, a distinctive breed of cattle? 



* Boyd Dawkins : " Cave Hunting," chap, vi., p. 224. 



