364 BRITISH MAMMALS 



Highland breeds of domestic cattle in Scotland. Authorities like 

 Mr. Lydekker are decidedly of opinion that these red and black 

 Highland cattle (their colours are noteworthy) may be descended 

 almost directly from the wild urus, of which they are little 

 else than a form degenerate in size. In Ireland and Wales, 

 and in Prehistoric Britain, the domestic cattle are less directly 

 connected with the urus, which in Wales and South Britain 

 (as on the Continent) appears to have dwindled into a dwarf 

 race, the Keltic short horn {Bos taurus longifrons). The little 

 black Kerry cattle, and the similar breeds in Wales, repre- 

 sent this degenerate urus at the present day, and this Keltic 

 short horn was the mam stock of the domestic cattle in Northern 

 and Central Europe. In Eastern Europe it is supposed occa- 

 sionally to have mingled with the domestic cattle received from 

 Syria or Egypt, and descended from the Indian stock, and this 

 strain of Indian blood has markedly shortened the head. In 

 Germany and Hungary many of the types of domestic cattle 

 were and are of very large size, and much like the urus, except 

 that the horns have a tendency to undulate. The Roman cattle 

 also seem to have been derived from the northern urus ; but in 

 Southern Italy, Southern and Western France, Spain, and North 

 Africa, the cattle have descended mainly from the IMauritanian 

 ox, though in Spain there seems to have been an intermixture 

 between this type and the northern urus. All these breeds have 

 at diflFerent times reached England by way of Germany, Holland, 

 France, and Spain, and have all played their part in evolving the 

 many modern types of domestic cattle in these islands, grafting 

 their own features on to a domesticated stock already in existence, 

 which was the child or the grandchild of the native urus. 



