DR. SMITH ON ANCIENT REMAINS. 141 



lines of evidence, the Historical and the Geological, meet 

 and cross, and the Scottish mountain bull, most abundant 

 in those ancient times, may very likely have been himself, 

 as tradition believed him to be, the Scottish representa- 

 tive of the Urus. It is a possible, and I think the most 

 probable, solution, especially if we take into considera- 

 tion the many instances of confirmatory evidence given 

 in this book. 



In Dr. Smith's excellent paper " On the Ancient 

 Cattle of Scotland,"* the value of which I estimate 

 most highly, though I am unable to concur in all its 

 conclusions, an admirable account is given of the 

 known cases in which the remains of the Urus (Bos 

 printigenius) have been found in Scotland. He deals 

 very fairly with the subject, mentioning the pro- 

 bable discovery in a marl pit, near Selkirk, of the skull 

 of the Urus in combination with bronze weapons, and 

 the finding " remains, apparently allied to this great 

 ox, in the ruins of human dwellings," the brocks or 

 Pictish houses " of Orkney and Caithness." But there 

 are other discoveries named in his paper which do not 

 seem to have struck him so forcibly as they do me. It 

 appears, from the instances given, that the remains of 

 the Urus, or of an ox nearly allied to it, have been 

 found also in Haddingtonshire, "in an ancient structure 

 built of dry stone walls, and a kitchen-midden, dis- 

 covered on an isolated rock known as the ' Grheeran/ on 

 the sea shore near Seacliff." Certain circumstances 

 connected with the account are curious. Amid a 

 multiplicity of bones there appear to have been none 

 found of any species now extinct; and the bones of 

 sheep being " in very great abundance," while those of 



* "Proceed. Soc. Antiq., Scotland," vol. ix., part ii., p. 587, &c. 



