ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY. 
283 
inferior to the foregoing, although larger than the Kerry, or even the old 
crooked horned Irish, but were comparatively few in number. In colour 
they were either dun, black, or white, but very rarely mottled. They 
were not bad milkers, were remarkably docile, and were consequently 
much used for draught and ploughing. Of the four examples of the crania 
of neat cattle which I have now placed before you, the most beautiful 
is the straight-horned,-—broad in the face, flat on the forehead, nearly 
level between the horns, with but slight projecting orbits, short, thick 
slugs or horn-cores, rising but little above the occipital crest, and 
turning slightly inwards like some of the best short-horned bulls of 
the present day. It is eighteen inches long in the face, and nineteen 
from tip to tip of horn-core. This was found at Dunshaughlin, and 
is evidently a domesticated descendant of the ancient wild Bos longi- 
frons , It is a cranium of surpassing beauty, and resembles in the most 
remarkable manner the ox-heads carved upon the friezes of Grecian 
temples,-—somewhat conical in the face, with short, straight horns, 
very broad at the base, and not more than eight or ten inches long, 
having force, dignity, and mildness expressed in even the dead bone. 
"Were we to wreathe this head with a garland of flowers, we would 
have before us a perfect example of those taurine embellishments 
sculptured upon the metopes of the Parthenon during the best days of 
Athenian architecture. This animal would appear to have been the 
creature used in sacrifice by the early Greeks, and also by the Hebrews, 
