THE few scattered herds of so-called Wild White Cattle which still exist in parks in England and Scotland may be said to form a connecting link, as it were, between the wild animals which have become extinct in this country within historic times, and those which may still be classed amongst our feræ

naturæ.

The race is undoubtedly of great antiquity, but whether it is descended, as some affirm, from the

aboriginal wild breed of the British forests-the Urus of Cæsar (Bos primigenius)—or whether, as others assert, it has at some period long remote been imported from abroad and since become feral, are questions upon which, at present, considerable difference of opinion prevails. The weight of scientific opinion, however, seems to favour the view that these wild white cattle were descended from the Urus, either by direct descent through wild animals from the wild bull, or less directly through domesticated cattle deriving their blood principally from him. That the Urus existed in Britain in prehistoric times, and was contemporaneous with man of the Paleolithic or older Stone Age, must be admitted. In the fluviatile deposits of the Thames, and in some other places, the remains of the two have been found together, and instances have been recorded in which the remains of the Urus have been found contemporaneous with man of the Neolithic or later Stone Age. In the Zoological Museum at Cambridge, where there is a remarkably fine skeleton of this animal from Burwell Fen, may be seen the greater portion of a skull from the same locality, in which a neolithic celt was found, and still remains imbedded. Another skull of this animal was found in a moss in Scotland, in conjunction with bronze

The Rev. Samuel Banks, Rector of Cottenham, possesses a fine skull of the Urus, found in Cottenham Fen, the fractured bone of which clearly testifies that it was destroyed by a human weapon.

See Carter, Geological Magazine, November, 1874. Both the specimens here referred to are figured in Miller and Skertchley's "Fenland, Past and Present," p. 321.

celts, indicating a still later period-the Bronze Age.

Mr. Woods has published a good description, with figures of the cranial part of the skull and horn-cores of Bos primigenius which were discovered in 1838 in the bed of the Avon, at Melksham, and has referred to similar remains found in the neighbourhoods of Bath, Tiverton and Newton St. Loe.*

In the Magazine of Natural History (1838, p. 163), Mr. Brown of Stanway has recorded the discovery in a mass of drift sand overlying the London clay at Clacton, Essex, of a portion of the cranium with horn-cores of Bos primigenius, a very perfect skull of which has been admirably figured by Professor Owen,† from a specimen found at Athole, Perthshire, and preserved in the British Museum.

Fleming, in his "History of British Animals" (1828), has referred to a skull of this animal which is now preserved in the Museum of the New College, Edinburgh, and of which he has briefly given dimensions. It was found in a marl-pit at Newburgh, Fifeshire. Through the kindness of Dr. J. A. Smith, and by permission of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, we are here enabled to figure it from an illustration, slightly reduced, in Dr. Smith's excellent "Notes on the Ancient Cattle of Scotland," printed in the "Proceedings" of the Society referred to. To the proprietors of The Field we are also indebted for permission to make use of an engraving of an * Woods' "Description of Fossil Skull of an Ox,” 4to, 1839. + "British Fossil Mammals," p. 498.

English skull of this animal, which, in The Field of April 18, 1868, illustrated some remarks on its discovery from the pen of Mr. W. B. Tegetmeier. This specimen was found in the bed of the Ribble, below Preston, Lancashire, in the spring of 1867, and passed into the possession of Mr. James Dobson of the Preston Chronicle, who kindly forwarded it for examination.

SKULL OF BOS PRIMIGENIUS, FIFESHIRE.

In these and other instances which have been recorded, the animals whose remains were found were, in all probability, wild, and not domesticated. Indeed, no discoveries have yet been made which lead to the supposition that the Urus was domesticated in Britain in pre-historic times; while Bos longifrons, the "Celtic short-horn," as it has been termed, was.

everywhere subjugated and used by man. The latter was the only ox in Britain in the time of the Romans, and afforded sustenance to their legions. From it the small dark breeds of Wales and Scotland are descended; and it survived until recently in Cornwall, Cumberland and Westmoreland. The remains of Bos longifrons are plentiful in the English fens, and it seems to have afforded a staple article of

T

SKULL OF BOS PRIMIGENIUS, LANCASHIRE.

food in the Neolithic Age. Mr. Sydney Skertchley found immense numbers of the bones of this animal in what are probably the remains of a Stone-age lakedwelling at Crowland.* At the great flint-implement manufactory at Grimes Graves, near Brandon, the remains of this animal are very plentiful, and belong chiefly to young calves. It would appear from this

* Miller and Skertchley, "Fenland, Past and Present," p. 343 (1878).