1867.] BOYD DAWKINS — BOS LONGIFEONS. 183 



more closely allied to the Esquimaux* than to any other dwelt in 

 Aquitaine, and still less in the inconceivably more remote Pleistocene 



6. Eelation to domestic races. 



"We have thus traced the animal through the Neolithic into the 

 Bronze age, and thence into the period of the occupation of Britain 

 by the Komans. Its relation to our domestic races of cattle still 

 remains to be discussed. Professor Owen holds two contradictory 

 opinions f on this point. On the one hand, he believes that the 

 Eoman colonists imported into Britain their " already domesticated 

 cattle," and that our breeds are their descendants. The fact that 

 Bos longifrons is the only Ox found in the refuse-heaps, in not one 

 or two but all the camps, cities, villas, and cemeteries that bear the 

 impress of Roman civilization in Britain is sufficient to refute this 

 hypothesis, which is unsupported by evidence derived either from 

 history or archaeology. On the other hand, he admits the proba- 

 bility that the Bos longifrons % was '' the species domesticated by 

 the Aborigines of Britain before the Eoman invasion." That this 

 animal was subject to man in the JN'eolithic and Bronze ages in 

 Switzerland has been proved beyond all doubt by Dr. Eiitimeyer §. 

 In our own country, its numbers, as compared with those of the Eed- 

 deer and Eoe-deer, in tumuli and Keltic villages, as, for example, in 

 those cited above, in "Wiltshire and Berkshire, prove that, probably in 

 the Stone- age, and most certainly in the Bronze- age, it was kept in 

 herds and slaughtered for man. When, therefore, the Eomans con- 

 quered Britain, there was no need of their importing cattle from Italy; 

 for they found a breed used to the climate and to the half- wild life 

 which, in a country for the most part uncleared, must have been their 

 lot. During the Eoman occupation the animal was the staple meat 

 of the country. "When the Eoman Empire yielded to the Teutonic 

 invaders, who had been kept at bay for centuries by its power, and 

 the legions in Britain were recalled for the defence of Italy, the 

 Saxons, in a conflict that lasted for nearly 150 years, drove out the 

 Eomanized Kelts, burnt their towns and their villas, and compelled 

 them to retreat to "Wales, Cornwall, and the highlands of Scotland, 

 taking, as far as they could, their cattle along with them. The fact 



* The evidence in favour of their affinities with the Esquimaux is the follow- 

 ing : — The identity of four of the harpoons, of fowKng-spears, marrow-spoons, and 

 scrapers ; the habit of sculpturing animals on their implements ; the absence of 

 pottery ; the same method of crushing the bones of the animals slain in hunting, 

 and their accumulation in one spot ; the carelessness about the remains of their 

 dead relatives ; the fact that the food consisted chiefly of Eeindeer, varied with 

 the flesh of other animals, such as the Musk-sheep ; and especially the small 

 stature, as proved in the people of the Dordogne Caverns by the small-handled 

 dagger figured by MM. Lartet and Christy in the ' Eevue Archeologique.' This 

 combination of characters is found, so far as I know, among no other people on 

 the face of the earth except the Esquimaux; and therefore I cannot help be- 

 lieving that this people in South Caul occupies the same relation to the Esqui- 

 maux, as the Musk-sheep and Eeindeer, on which they lived, hold to those now 

 living in the northern regions. 



t Op. cit. p. 500. t Op. cit. p. 514. 



§ Op. cit. ■ 



