138 JVo tices of vario us A nima I Remains 



coloured, which were most probably the more common breed 

 of the district. And let me call to your recollection a 

 remark of Hector Boece himself, in the passage already 

 quoted : that, with the exception of their colour and manes, 

 the wild white cattle are exceedingly like the ordinary tame 

 or domesticated breed ; and that their flesh is very pleasant 

 food, and much approved of by the nobility ; — both of which 

 observations, in my opinion, tend to shew the truth of the 

 views now stated. 



Youatt says, the old legends of Wales speak of the ancient 

 domesticated cattle, being of a dark or reddish colour, resem- 

 bling considerably the Devon cattle ; and according to the 

 same authority, " the slightest observation will convince us 

 that the cattle in Devonshire, Sussex, Wales, and Scotland, 

 are all essentially the same." He considers that red had been 

 their primitive colour, as he traces it through all these varie- 

 ties, and declares that even where another colour, as black, 

 now prevails, the memory of the red still remains, and has a 

 superstitious reverence paid to it in the legends of the people. 

 In Scotland also there has always existed a popular feeling of 

 preference for the red cow, it being declared to be " luckier," 

 and to give more milk. It is, perhaps, worthy of notice, in re- 

 lation to the question of colour, that the Urus, or B. primi- 

 genius, is believed to have been of a dark or black colour ; and 

 in what I consider to be a very rare specimen of a portion of 

 the skull of the Bos longifrons, with the horn and part of 

 the skin and hair still attached, which was kindly shewn me 

 by Professor Fleming, the colour of the hair, as far as you 

 can judge from a specimen found in an Irish bog, is also of 

 a black or dark reddish or brownish tint ; it may be, bear- 

 ing a relation to the very colour to which I have been allud- 

 ing. 



And, in conclusion, I may remark, that the small size of 

 the domesticated cattle in this country, from the very earliest 

 times, seems to me an additional and unanswerable objection 

 to their having descended from the gigantic Urus. Professor 

 Nilsson, however, in his paper already referred to, considers 

 " that we may take it as a given and general rule, that the 

 tame race is always less than the wild species from which it 



