Page:On the Ancient and Modern Races of Oxen in Ireland (IA jstor-20489834).pdf/3

66 we may learn what was the abundance of cattle at all periods in Ireland, from the numbers said to have been carried off by the chieftains or petty kings in their unceasing wars upon each other, as well as by the destruction of our herds and flocks by invading armies. That oxen ranged wild in some part of the country in very early times, I have long since shown, from the curious zoological poem concerning Cailte Mac Bonan, the foster-brother of Fin M'Coul, who, being required by King Cormack to ransom that chieftain, by producing upon the green of Tara a pair of each animal in Ireland, brought two" wild oxen from the district of Burren, in Clare. But at a very early period the Irish domesticated their oxen, and yoked them in the plough.

"In our Brehon Laws, H. 2, 15, p. 40, col. b," writes Dr. O'Donovan to me, "the measurement of a cow is given:" in girth "𝔵𝔵 𝔡𝔬𝔫𝔫—twenty hands, or 6 feet 8 inches; from which it would appear to me that the size was smaller than that of our present cow. You will find from the fragments of those Laws, given in Vallancey's Collectanea, vol. iii., that the milch cow was valued at twenty-four screpalls; a three-year old heifer, twelve screpalls; a calpach, or twgyear old, six or eight screpalls; a dart, four screpalls; a dartaid, two screpalls."

Our annals and histories also abound with records of epizootics from a period anterior to the Christian era, down to the recent great pestilence of pleuro-pneumonia which ravaged the flocks of this country, in common with those of the rest of Europe. Their history is exceedingly interesting, as constituting symptoms of those great epidemic constitutions which come upon particular parts at almost regular periods, but which only attract attention when they occur in our own times. As, however, I have recently published an extended history of these epizootics in a Parliamentary Report ("The Census of Ireland for 1851," Part v., vol. i.), I need not do more than allude to the subject here.

The relics of our ancient oxen are not only abundant and interesting to the naturalist, but are exceedingly curious in an historical point of view, as they afford undeniable evidence that, so far back as the eighth or tenth century at the latest, we had in Ireland a breed of cattle which, for beauty of head and shortness of horn, might vie with some of the best modern improved races, so much admired by stockmasters, and which are now being re-introduced from England. I here beg to observe that this communication is not intended as a purely zoological or anatomical paper. I am not going to discuss the mooted question of species and variety; and I am well aware of the great difficulties attending the classification of domestic animals, which have not only been derived accidentally from two or three varieties, but among which great and successful efforts have been made by man to alter their physical characters for his own purposes by what is called breeding—a subject of very great importance in the present day. But breeders and cattle-fanciers, as well as naturalists, have adopted a particular nomenclature, well adapted for expressing their meaning; when, therefore, in the following description I speak of breeds or races of cattle, I am not to be understood as meaning anything more than the varieties of a variety.