282 
PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
panions in the west, thus proving that they existed here in what may he 
termed our middle ages. The skull and horn-core of one of those which I 
figured in Hall’s “ Ireland” many years ago is here represented. There is 
also a portion of the frontal hone 
and horn-core of this long-horned 
breed, found in a hog in the 
county of Limerick, now in the 
Museum of Trinity College. 
Were one to strip the skull of 
one of these animals of its horn- 
cores, it would, from the narrow 
forehead and projecting crest, re¬ 
semble in a most remarkable man¬ 
ner the cranium of the maol, or 
hornless breed. I regret to say that the race is nearly extinct; the 
only possessor of any that I now know is Lord De Freyne, who has still 
a stock at Frenchpark, and lately exhibited a pair at the Loyal Dublin 
Society’s Cattle Show. They have been replaced upon the plains of 
Bathcroghan and Moylurg by the modern imported and much prized 
short-horn—a beast with a thin silky skin, short fine hair, and which 
comes to perfection, and consequently gives a return to the breeder or 
feeder, in one-half the time in which the old long-horns did. But it cannot 
be denied that it is of a comparatively delicate constitution, and must, 
from the physical circ am stances which I have mentioned, be more liable 
to disease than its hardy, slow-growing, thick-skinned, easily fed pre¬ 
decessor. 
I know it will be considered a heresy, and probably presumptuous 
of me, to offer any opinion upon this subject; but I would propound this 
question to the grazier, and also to the political economist:—-Taking 
the slow growth, but great size, strong hide, little care required with, 
and comparative immunity from disease of this long-horned stock on the 
one side; and, upon the other, the great original first cost, the rapid 
growth to saleable perfection, and also the quick, but perhaps unwhole¬ 
some, and certainly unnaturally induced powers of reproduction, toge¬ 
ther with the great susceptibility of fattening, the thin hide, the winter 
care, both of housing and provender it required, and the very great 
susceptibility of disease, both sporadic and epidemic,—-and then strike 
the balance, and I am not sure that it would not turn in favour of our 
native stock. Certain I am that the beef would be more wholesome. 
Fashion, however, may have had its influence in this matter. But we 
need not wonder at £250 being given for a yearling calf, when twenty 
guineas was but very lately considered a moderate price for a Cochin 
cock during the epidemic of the ‘ fowl fever,’ which raged so extensively 
in Great Britain and Ireland. 
The fourth is the Maol or Moyle, the polled, or hornless breed, si¬ 
milar to the Angus of the neighbouring kingdom, called Myleen in Con¬ 
naught, Mael in Munster, and Mwool in Ulster. In size they were 
