184 PROCEEDIJfGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Feb. 20, 



that we speak in a Teutonic and not a Eomanic tongue proves how 

 completely this depopulation of the more fertile provinces of Britain 

 was effected. " Our forefathers," writes Mr. Freeman *, '' appeared 

 in the Isle of Britain purely as destroyers ; nowhere else in Western 

 Europe were the existing men and the existing institutions so utterly 

 swept away. The English wiped out everything Celtic and every- 

 thing Eoman as thoroughly as everything Eoman was wiped out of 

 Africa by the Saracen conquerors of Carthage. A more fearful blow 

 never fell on any nation than the landing of the Angles and Saxons 

 was to the Celt of Britain." 



The authors of the ' Pictish Chronicle ' incidentally prove that the 

 Saxons had expelled the Romanized Kelts from the Province of 

 Yalentia, that embraced the Lowlands of Scotland and part of 

 Northumberland, when they state that the Highlanders of the 

 seventh century, " descenderunt in Saxoniam." In this ruthless 

 destruction of Eoman civilization in Britain lies the explanation of 

 the affinities of the small Welsh and Scotch cattle to Bos longifrons. 

 They are in all probability the lineal descendants of those which the 

 Eomanized Kelts took with them in their retreat, and bear exactly the 

 same relation to them as the modern Brit- Welsh does to the mixture of 

 Keltic and Latin, which was the language of Eoman Britain. During 

 that war of nearly a century and a half, the variety seems to have 

 died out in the parts of the country that were under Saxon rule ; and 

 I have sought in vain for any evidence of its reappearance from that 

 time to the present. If I might hazard a guess at the immediate 

 source whence our large cattle spring, I would suggest that the Low- 

 lands between the mouth of the Ehine and Jutland, now famous 

 for the large size of their cattle (such as those of Friesland), which 

 was the ancient home of our Saxon ancestors, was also the place 

 whence their cattle were imported. These larger cattle, as I have 

 stated in my first essay, are, probably, derived from the Bos urus. 



7. CONCLTJSIOI^. 



The inferences to be drawn from the preceding pages are : — first, 

 that the Bos longifrons has not yet been proved to have existed 

 before the Prehistoric age, in the Bone-caves and alluvia of which 

 it is found abundantly ; and, secondly, that it is the ancestor of the 

 small Highland and Welsh breeds. It is essentially the animal 

 with which the Archaeologists have to deal ; and its only claim for in- 

 sertion in Geological Catalogues is the fact of its occurrence in the 

 most modern of all the stratified deposits. 



* ' History of the i^^orman Conquest of England/ by E. E, Freeman, M.A., 

 vol. i. p. 20. 8vo. Oxford, 1867. 



