Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1880 edition. Excerpt: ..., WILD WHITE CATTLE. 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 fercu naturae. 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 Caesar (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 Palaeolithic 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.t Another skull of this animal was found in a moss in Scotland, in conjunction with bronze * The Rev. Samuel Banks, Eector...