142 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



the goat were " few," seems to indicate the comparatively 

 recent date of these remains. Here, too, there were 

 found of bones "of oxen a great abundance, and con- 

 sisting of several varieties." The Bos longifrons was 

 one ; what were the " others" ? 



It is much to be regretted that so little attention 

 has been paid, in most of these Scottish discoveries of 

 the remains of the Urus, to the question of date and to 

 the circumstances under which they were found ; which 

 are the more important because the smaller dimensions 

 of the remains of this animal found in Scotland, as com- 

 pared with those of the Thames Valley and other places, 

 apparently prove either that it was always here, as in 

 Scandinavia, of inferior magnitude, or that many of 

 these reliquia belonged to those of the species which 

 lived at a later period, when they had generally decreased 

 in size. To show how considerable is the difference, I 

 will merely say that in one instance only of the many 

 specimens from the brick earth of Ilford now in the 

 British Museum is the circumference of the horn-cores 

 at the base so little as fifteen inches, every other 

 specimen measuring from seventeen to eighteen inches ; 

 while in the numerous Scottish examples referred to by 

 Dr. Smith, only two are given the circumference of 

 whose horn-cores at the base attains to fourteen inches^ 

 the others being all of less, and some of much smaller 

 dimensions. It would not be, I think, too much to 

 say that in this particular the average variation in size 

 between the Scottish specimens and the Ilford ones is 

 nearly, if not quite, as two is to three, one-third less ; 

 and there appears to be in other respects a corresponding 

 inferiority in size. In some cases, too, these relatively 

 small skulls of the Scottish Urus appear to have been 



