500 Wild Cattle of Great Britain. 
“ I think that very likely Bos urus was already in both islands as 
a wild beast. But Bos urus and the big white are not the same. 
The big white was domesticated from the first, and probably came, 
as you yourself suggest, from the polled breeds of India. I am 
trying to gather all the evidence I can get to show what the last 
thousand years may have done to make British breeds what they 
are, and thence to infer what the thousand years before that may 
have contributed. The long-horn, as I fancy, came over with the 
Romans, and the white polls with the Danes long subsequently. 
It was through the working of this Danish introduction that all the 
polled breeds took their rise. I fancy during the Wars of the Roses 
in England and up to the time of the union with Scotland breeding 
cattle was pursued without any aims beyond these :— 
“1. Certain districts tried to get big oxen for labor. 
“2. Other districts avowedly preferred the smaller cattle, as 
better able to live in the huts with their owners. 
“Through these influences, up in the mountains, the smaller or 
(Bos longifrons) North Highland type kept its ground. In the 
plains and near the towns the cattle became larger, partly from 
selection, partly because their veins were filled with many inter- 
mixtures. Bulls would come from the south as baggage animals 
in the track of returning armies and would be crossed’ with 
enlarge the native cows. So all through the richer lands on the 
south and east side of Scotland there was not any fixed type for a 
century or two as there was in the north and the west. But still it 
was these cattle of the plains (I believe) which originated the 
‘ doddies,’ 
“ Wherever the Dane (white polled) extended itself it broke the 
colors—first conveyed the disposition to throw occasional polled 
calves, The disposition to produce polled calves and the mixing 
colors are evidences of latent (perhaps very remote) connection with 
the Danish introduction. ; 
“Tt would be absurd to suppose that the Danish introductions 
were all that we now regard as ‘pure bred’—i.e., all alike and 
entirely of one descent. Probably there were a few cherished white 
herds in the north of Europe kept to one type; but, more likely, 
the cattle were early mixed through the predatory habits of the 
red-rovers. The Danes may have brought over here a few pute 
whites, gifts to their chiefs ; but they brought over far more W 
were carried off by their vessels from shores on which they touched 
