52 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



than it did in the East or on the Mediterranean shores, 

 and therefore " the historic age " in this country is held 

 to commence with the first invasion of Caesar, in the 

 year 55 b.c. Caesar's statements respecting Britain and 

 its inhabitants were the earliest dawn of British history ; 

 hut his knowledge of the country was at the best im- 

 perfect, and confined to its southern coasts. It was not 

 till the year of our Lord 43, when the Romans, under 

 Aulus Plautius, again invaded and in part conquered it, 

 that much was known about Britain ; but we are 

 content to take the year 55 B.C., when Caesar first 

 invaded it, as the commencement of its historic age. 



In the meantime, what had become of the ancient JBos 

 primigenius, or Urus ? It existed, we know, in Britain in 

 pre-historic times. With man of the palaeolithic or 

 Older Stone Age, the Urus was, it will be I think 

 admitted, contemporaneous. In the fluviatile deposits 

 of the Thames valley, and in some other places, the 

 remains of the two have been found together. A friend 

 of mine* has a fine skull of the Urus, found in Cotten- 

 ham Fen, the fractured bone of which clearly testifies 

 that it was destroyed by a human weapon. Other 

 instances occur in which the remains of the Urus have 

 been found contemporaneous with man of the neolithic 

 or Later Stone Age. For one such instance I refer to 

 the admirable paper of Mr. Carter, in the " Geological 

 Society's Magazine" for November, 1874, on the skull 

 of the Urus pierced with the neolithic celt, and with the 

 celt still remaining in the fracture, found in Burwell 

 Fen, near Cambridge. The evidence of this fact is 

 overpowering, and the belief in the neolithic character 



* The Rev. Samuel Banks, Rector of Cotteuham. 



