PRE-HISTORIC BRITAIN. 51 



they were clearly descended from the Bos primigenius, 

 or Urus ; either by direct descent through wild animals 

 from the wild bull; or less directly, through domesti- 

 cated cattle deriving their blood principally from him. 

 This opinion has been doubted by some eminent men ; 

 but it has been held by such high authorities as 

 Kutimeyer, Nilsson, Sir Charles Lyell, Boyd Dawkins, 

 Darwin, and others ; and until a much more full and 

 complete osteological examination takes place than has 

 ever yet been made, I must be content to be led by 

 these authorities, believing that on this side lies the 

 great weight of scientific evidence. The strong 

 resemblance in colour and character which has already 

 been pointed out of the British white cattle to the 

 Hungarian race and to that of the steppes of Russia — 

 undoubted descendants as these are of the wild Urus — 

 appears also to be a strong point in favour of this view. 

 When the Pleistocene period had passed, some, but 

 by no means all, of the large animals which then in- 

 habited Britain continued to make it still their abode — 

 less in number, perhaps, and in many cases less in size. 

 The gigantic elephants, the rhinoceri, and others, with 

 many of the larger Carnivora, disappeared ; the Bos 

 primigenius, the stag, and others remained, and the 

 small Bos longifrons everywhere was numerous. Man, 

 too, had appeared more decisively on the scene ; and the 

 time arrived which scientific men have named " the pre- 

 historic age," to distinguish it, on the one hand, from 

 the more strictly geological epochs which preceded it, 

 and on the other from " the historic age," the domain of 

 bond fide history which followed it. In Britain and in 

 other northern countries, long savage and unknown, the 

 historic age, of course, began thousands of years later 



