found near New stead, Roxburghshire. 139 



springs." Now this is a proposition which I am very much 

 inclined to doubt, believing, as I do, that animals are by no 

 means necessarily degenerated and dwarfed in their dimen- 

 sions, as the Professor supposes, when taken under the care 

 and protection of man, but, on the contrary, are rather in- 

 creased in size, by careful tending and feeding, as well as by 

 attention to their breeding ; and examples in proof of this 

 view, I am inclined to think, may be found in our domesti- 

 cated dogs, horses, &c. We know, from such specimens as 

 these skulls I have described, the small size of at least some 

 species of cattle in the Roman period ; and others, of an ex- 

 actly corresponding kind and size, have been found, as 

 already mentioned, belonging to an immensely older geo- 

 logic period, carrying us back in this way to times alto- 

 gether prior to the existence of man. Then, in much later 

 times, as shewn in the Welsh Laws of Howell the Good, 

 in the tenth century, (vide Wotton's Trans. Leges Wallicos,) 

 we have apparently given to us the different sizes of the 

 yokes used for ploughing ; and if so, from these we find that the 

 cattle of that date must have been much smaller than those of 

 the present day. Thus we find it stated in Lib. III., chap, ix., 

 p. 279, Be Societate Arationis. — " Jugum breve qnattuor 

 pedibus (longum) ; Jugum maiale octonis pedibus ; Jugum 

 axillare duodenis pedibus ; Jugum longum senis denis pedi- 

 bus." In other passages of these laws, we have these vari- 

 ous yokes referred to as measures of the land ; being ap- 

 parently taken from the well-known sizes of the different 

 yokes themselves. The cattle, Mr Youatt says, were always 

 yoked abreast, and the short yoke for two oxen was only four 

 Welsh feet of nine inches each, or three feet English in length, 

 increasing in the same proportion for four oxen ; and for 

 eight, which was 16 Welsh feet, or 12 feet English long. 

 Chap, ix., 2 of Lib. III. of Leges Wallicm. — " Uncia longi- 

 tudine trium granorum hordeacorum constat — Palma tribus 

 unciis — Pes tribus palmis ;" shewing in this way of what 

 these measures consist. Mr Youatt declares that an ox of 

 the present day would require a somewhat larger space than 

 18 inches, in order to work or even to stand. (Vide Youatt 

 " On Cattle.'') And when we remember the small size of our 



