226 
27th report, bureau of animal industry. 
Another modification of British cattle began when longhorned 
cattle, of primigenius descent, were introduced from Jutland, Fries- 
land, and the Lower Elbe. Grant Allen, in "Anglo-Saxon Britain " 
(p. 14), says: 
The early English in Sleswick and Friesland had partially reached the agri- 
cultural stage of civilization. They tilled little plots of ground in the forest ; 
but they depended more largely for subsistence upon their cattle, and they were 
also hunters and trappers in the great belts of woodland or marsh which every- 
where surrounded their isolated villages. They were acquainted with the use 
of bronze from the first period of their settlement in Europe. 
The wealth of the people consisted mainly in cattle, which fed on the pasture, 
and pigs turned out to fatten on the acorns of the forest ; but a small portion of 
the soil was plowed and sown, and this portion also was distributed to the 
villagers for tillage by annual arrangement. 
The Saxons probably brought their cattle with them to England, 
while the Celts retreated with their shorthorned longifrons to the 
mountains of Scotland and Wales. The descendants of these cattle 
^have furnished the foundation stock of modern breeds in those dis- 
tricts. Later introductions from Normandy and northern Germany 
have modified the breeds in the . eastern and southern countries. 
Hughes cites the Kerry as the modern breed most typical of the old 
Celtic Shorthorn, the Highland and Welsh breeds of the cross between 
the Celtic Shorthorn and Roman cattle, and the longhorn breed as the 
most typical of the result of a cross with the breeds of the lowlands 
on the Continent. 
It is the general opinion at the present time that the white Park 
cattle are descendants of some domesticated white breed which have 
become feral. Wilson believes that all hornless breeds of the British 
Isles can be traced to a Scandinavian origin, but this does not account 
for the hornless wild cattle nor the hornless skulls found in the 
Roman fort at Newstead. 
Ewart (1911) finds four distinct types of horned oxen at New- 
stead, namely, longifrons^ primigenius^ acutifrons^ and a type with a 
convex forehead and rounded poll resembling namadiciis rather than 
primigenius. There were also flat -polled and round-polled types of 
hornless oxen. 
IRELAND. 
The native cattle of Ireland are presumably descendants of the 
wild forest breed, as they have characteristics resembling the Welsh 
and Highland cattle. The remains of Bos longifrons are also abun- 
dant. At Uriconium, which for a long time was the headquarters of 
the Roman Twentieth Legion^ remains of frontosus have been found 
(Blyth, 1864). 
Females were more abundant than the males, an indication that they 
were domesticated. The oldest annals of Ireland refer to horned cat- 
tle, but for a long period hornless cattle also have been quite numerous. 
