Cattle of Great Britain,' the late Rev. John Storer devoted himself mainly to the substantiating of his belief that the semi-wild cattle confined in the Chillingham and Cadzow and some other parks were the progeny of the great urus; and that the Bos longifrons, having been "driven with its master, the Celt, to the remote and inaccessible parts which the English could not reach," has been preserved in the Kyloe of the Highlands of Scotland and in the smaller cattle of Wales.

Owen considers it highly improbable that the enormous and savage urus, spoken of by Cæsar, was ever tamed so as to be fitted for the uses of man. He believes that the progress of agricultural settlement had caused its "utter extirpation," just as similar progress in North America is fast driving out the bison, and as it drove out the Aurochs in Europe, and that our knowledge of the urus “is now limited to deductions from its fossil or semi-fossil remains." Owen suggests that the early domestic cattle in Britain, more particularly in Roman Britain, had been derived mainly from importations of breeds "already domesticated" by the founders of the new British colonies. But, he remarks, "if it should still be contended that the natives of Britain or any part of them obtained their cattle by taming a primitive wild race, neither the bison nor the great urus are so likely to have furnished the source of their herds as the smaller primitive wild species or original variety of Bos," the longifrons. Winding up his concise and complete description of the longifrons, the same writer says: "In this field of conjecture the most probable one will be admitted to be that which points to the Bos longifrons as the species which would be domesticated by the aborigines of Britain before the Roman invasion." Dr John Alexander Smith, of Edinburgh, who has given much attention to the subject, and whose papers on the "Ancient Cattle of Scotland," published in the 'Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland,' are full of interest,

expresses his entire concurrence with Owen's belief as to the extirpation of the urus. Dr Smith adds: "To suppose beasts like these not only tamed, in opposition to such decided evidence to the contrary, but also so strangely degenerated into the comparatively small-sized and placid ox of the present day, seems really past belief." He is inclined to regard the longifrons as "the true origin of our domesticated cattle," and presents strong evidence in support of the contention.

These extracts from noted writers, not by any means comprising all the different views that have been expressed by men entitled to be heard on the subject, will serve to indicate how hopelessly involved the question of the "true origin" of our domestic cattle has become. But while we despair of the discovery of facts calculated to bring all investigators and thinkers to full agreement, we indulge the comfortable conviction that for every practical purpose it matters little which of the varying "beliefs," "opinions," and "contentions" referred to is really the correct one. We shall not seriously raise the question. as to whether the two recognised types of ancient humpless cattle, the urus and the longifrons, should properly be regarded as "distinct species," or merely as varieties. of one species, the sub-genus Bos taurus, modified in form by food, climate, and other changing conditions. That is indeed a question upon which some pertinent considerations might be submitted; but for our present purpose will suffice to assure the reader that whether the existing races of domesticated cattle are the descendants of the huge long-horned urus, or the slender short-horned longifrons, or of both combined, the material of which these races are composed and the forces bound up in them are still the same. If (as the late Mr Storer would have us believe) at Chillingham we might look upon a pure descendant of the urus, and in the Highlands of Scotland upon a living specimen of the ancient longifrons, we would

in the two cases have before us material of almost complete sameness-animals so entirely identical in structure, although slightly modified in form by different usage, that in spite of all the arbitrary and fanciful distinctions that naturalists have endeavoured to set up, we would still feel constrained to regard them as having had a common origin in one well-defined if somewhat varying species of the genus Bos,-those wild humpless cattle that browsed on the luxuriant plains in this country during the NewerPliocene period.

In leaving this subject, we may present an apt quotation from a footnote in Professor Low's admirable work on the Domestic Animals of Great Britain.' In referring to the huge oxen whose skeletons were found in various parts of Europe, Professor Low says these skeletons indicate an animal nearly three times the bulk of the oxen of the present day, and adds that the skeletons have been found "in the same situations as the great extinct Irish Elk, and thus seem to have survived various species with which they were associated, and even perhaps to have survived till within the historic era." Continuing, he says: "A question, however, which has been agitated by naturalists is, Whether these huge animals are the origin of the domestic races, and may not even have been the uri described by Cæsar? The question is one which bears less than is assumed upon the origin of the existing races. We can, by all the evidence which the question admits of, trace existing races to the ancient uri which, long posterior to the historical era, inhabited the forests of Germany, Gaul, Britain, and other countries. It is a question involving an entirely different series of considerations, whether these uri were themselves descended from an anterior race, surpassing them in magnitude, and inhabiting the globe at the same time with other extinct species. While there is nothing that can directly support this hypothesis, there is nothing certainly

founded on analogy that can enable us to invalidate it. There is nothing more incredible in the supposition that animals should diminish in size, with changes in the condition of the earth, than that they should be extinguished altogether, and supplanted by new species. The fossil urus inhabited Europe when a very different condition existed with regard to temperature, the supplies of vegetable food, and the consequent development of animal forms. Why should not the urus, under these conditions, have been a far larger animal than he subsequently became ? We know by experience the effects of food in increasing or diminishing the size of this very race of animals. The great ox of the Lincolnshire fens exceeds in size the little ox of Barbary or the Highland hills, as much as the fossil urus exceeded the larger oxen of Germany and England; and we cannot consider it as incredible, that animals which inhabited Europe when elephants found food and a climate suited to their natures, should have greatly surpassed in magnitude the same species under the present conditions of the same countries."

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CHAPTER II.

ORIGIN OF POLLED RACES OF CATTLE.

Speculation as to origin of hornless cattle-Their antiquity-Their distinctiveness-Letter from Darwin on loss of horns-Letter from Dr John Alexander Smith-Professor Low's opinion-Absence of horns -Deviation from original form-Loss of horns before and after domestication-Preserved and fixed by selection in breeding - Acquaintance with principles of breeding in early times-Advice of Palladius, Columella, and Virgil-Distribution of polled cattle-Polled cattle in Austria, South America, Norway, and Iceland-In Cheshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Norfolk, Yorkshire, Devonshire, in England-In Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, and Isle of Skye, in ScotlandIn Ireland—Existing polled breeds in United Kingdom-The Galloway breed-Norfolk and Suffolk polls.

REGARDING the probable derivation of the polled varieties of cattle, there has been considerable speculation. As far as our present knowledge extends, the subject is found to rest mainly on conjecture. By some it has been seriously argued that polled cattle are entitled to be ranked as an original and distinct species. We have even met with the assertion that their polled progenitors first saw the post-diluvian world at the "general dispersion on Mount Ararat"! Without going either so far back or so high up for their origin, the majority of thoughtful writers who have given attention to the subject are prepared to assign to the principal living varieties or breeds of polled or hornless cattle a separate existence for a long period of time. The idea which finds most favour-and we believe