278 
PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
we may learn what was the abundance of cattle at all periods in Ireland, 
from the numbers said to have been carried off by the chieftains or petty 
kings in their unceasing wars upon each other, as well as by the de¬ 
struction of our herds and flocks by invading armies. That oxen ranged 
wild in some part of the country in very early times, I have long since 
shown, from the curious zoological poem concerning Cailte Mac Honan, 
the foster-brother of Tin M‘Coul, who, being required by King Cormack 
to ransom that chieftain, by producing upon the green of Tara a pair of 
each animal in Ireland, brought two wild oxen from the district of 
Burren, in Clare. But at a very early period the Irish domesticated 
their oxen, and yoked them in the plough. 
“ In our Brehon Laws, H. 2, 15, p. 40, col. writes Dr. O’Donovan 
to me, “ the measurement of a cow is given:” in girth “;r;c t)opn— 
twenty hands, or 6 feet 8 inches; from which it would appear to me that 
the size was smaller than that of our present cow. You will find from 
the fragments of those Laws, given in Yallancey’s Collectanea, vol. iii., 
that the milch cow was valued at twenty-four screpalls; a three-year old 
heifer, twelve screpalls; a calpach , or two-year old, six or eight screpalls; 
a dart, four screpalls; a dart aid, two screpalls 
Our annals and histories also abound with records of epizootics from 
a period anterior to the Christian era, down to the recent great pestilence 
of pleuro-pneumonia which ravaged the flocks of this country, in com¬ 
mon with those of the rest of Europe. Their history is exceedingly in¬ 
teresting, as constituting symptoms of those great epidemic constitutions 
which come upon particular parts at almost regular periods, but which 
only attract attention when they occur in our own times. As, however, 
I have recently published an extended history of these epizootics in a 
Parliamentary Beport (“ The Census of Ireland for 1851,” Part v., 
vol. i.), I need not do more than allude to the subject here. 
The relics of our ancient oxen are not only abundant and interest¬ 
ing to the naturalist, but are exceedingly curious in an historical point 
of view, as they afford undeniable evidence that, so far back as the eighth 
or tenth century at the latest, we had in Ireland a breed of cattle which, 
for beauty of head and shortness of horn, might vie with some of the best 
modern improved races, so much admired by stockmasters, and which are 
now being re-introduced from England. I here beg to observe that this 
communication is not intended as a purely zoological or anatomical paper. 
I am not going to discuss the mooted question of species and variety; and 
I am well aware of the great difficulties attending the classification of 
domestic animals, which have not only been derived accidentally from 
two or three varieties, but among which great and successful efforts have 
been made by man to alter their physical characters for his own purposes 
by what is called breeding-—a subject of very great importance in the 
present day. But breeders and cattle-fanciers, as well as naturalists, 
have adopted a particular nomenclature, well adapted for expressing 
their meaning; when, therefore, in the following description I speak of 
breeds or races of cattle, I am not to be understood as meaning anything 
more than the varieties of a variety. 
