TEE CELTIC OX. 5 



cultivating the land, but subsisting upon milk and flesh 

 and clothed with the skins of animals, while the mari- 

 time parts had attained to a higher culture. But of 

 the whole he says that " the multitude of inhabitants 

 was infinite, the edifices most frequent, and the number 

 of the cattle great." * These cattle were the small 

 Celtic Bos longifrons. Careful examinations made by 

 scientific men of the remains found in refuse heaps, in 

 caves, and elsewhere, seem to show, so far as has yet 

 been ascertained, that this was the only domesticated 

 ox of the ancient Britons, and that it was this variety 

 which subsequently, during the Roman occupation of 

 Britain, supplied with beef its Romanised inhabitants, 

 and also the Roman legionaries. This small, deer-like 

 ox, as JSTilsson has described it, was then everywhere 

 present in a domesticated state. It is supposed to have 

 been of a dark colour : for so generally were its known 

 descendants ; and so also was apparently the still re- 

 maining hair upon a very perfect skull of this animal 

 found in the year 1846 in an Irish bog. This specimen, 

 which has both the horns themselves, and also a part of 

 the skin with the hair, attached, seems to show that the 

 creature had a rough shaggy hide, like the Highland 

 kyloes. 



But a terrible change came, and Borne, obliged 

 to withdraw her legions for her own protection, 

 left her Bomano-Celtic subjects to protect themselves 

 against the devastating raids of the Picts and Scots. 

 The Britons called to their aid the various Teutonic 

 tribes, predatory and fierce, who, then inhabiting the 

 opposite shores of Jutland, Holstein, and Friesland, have 



* "De Bello Gall.," lib. v., cc. 12, 14. 



