214 WILD WHITE CATTLE. 



aboriginal wild breed of the British forests — the 

 Urus of Osesar (Bos primigenius) — or whether, as 

 others assert, it has at some period long remote 

 been imported from abroad and since become feral, 

 are questions upon which, at present, considerable 

 difference of opinion prevails. The weight of scien- 

 tific opinion, however, seems to favour the view that 

 these wild white cattle were descended from the 

 Urus, either by direct descent through wild animals 

 from the wild bull, or less directly through domesti- 

 cated cattle deriving their blood principally from 

 him. That the Urus existed in Britain in prehistoric 

 times, and was contemporaneous with man of the 

 Palaeolithic or older Stone Age, must be admitted. 

 In the fluviatile deposits of the Thames, and in some 

 other places, the remains of the two have been found 

 together,* and instances have been recorded in 

 which the remains of the Urus have been found 

 contemporaneous with man of the Neolithic or 

 later Stone Age. In the Zoological Museum at 

 Cambridge, where there is a remarkably fine skeleton 

 of this animal from Burwell Fen, may be seen the 

 greater portion of a skull from the same locality, in 

 which a neolithic celt was found, and still remains 

 imbedded. t Another skull of this animal was found 

 in a moss in Scotland, in conjunction with bronze 



* The Rev. Samuel Banks, Eeotor of Cottenham, possesses a fine' 

 skull of the Urus, found in Cottenham Fen, the fractured bone of which 

 clearly testifies that it was destroyed by a human weapon. 



t See Carter, Geological Magazine, November, 1874, Both the 

 specimens here referred to are figured in Miller and Skertchley's "Fen- 

 land, Past and Present," p. 321. 



