Page:On the Ancient and Modern Races of Oxen in Ireland (IA jstor-20489834).pdf/5

68 Academy that in the year 1840 I presented to the Museum, and de scribed in the "Proceedings," a large quantity of animal remains which had been discovered in the great crannoge of Lagore, near Dunshaughlin, county of Meath-the first of those curious marsh or lake-fortresses which have been discovered during the last twenty years. The most remarkable, as well as the most numerous, specimens amongst that vast collection, amounting to hundreds of cart-loads, were the remains of horned cattle. With these were found the largest, the most varied, and I think I am justified in saying, the most valuable, collection of antiquities, viewed from an ethnological point of view, which has ever been found in Ireland, of which a large number now adorn our Museum, and serve to fix the range of date of that crannoge and its osseous contents, viz., from A. D. 848 to 933. Since then many other crannoges have been brought to light during the progress of the arterial drainage in different parts of the country, as set forth in the "Catalogue of the Antiquities of Vegetable Material." From these localities, as well as in deep cuttings also made for the same purpose, and in peat bogs, particularly iii the counties of Roscommon, Westmeath, Tyrone, Longford, and Fermanagh; from Loughgur, in the county of Limerick; and in the artificial embankments, as well as in some of the subterranean passages of ancient raths-other specimens of bovine remains have been deposited in the Museum by the Board of Works, and by private donors. Several of the specimens which.I described in 1840 were subsequently figured in Mr. and Mrs. Hall's beautiful work on Ireland. I have selected twenty heads of ancient oxen belonging to the Academy's and my own collections, and arranged them in four rows, each row characteristic of a peculiar race or breed, viz., the straight-horned, the curved or middle-horned, the short-horned, and the hornless, or maol, all of which existed in Ire land in the early period to which I have already alluded. Can we now identify any of those old heads with those belonging to our native races of the present century? Before that question is discussed it is necessary to say something on the subject of the native cattle of Ireland, ere they became replaced or altered by the old Ayrshires or Durhams, or the more recent improved breeds introduced by Bakewell, Colling, and others.

According to my own observations, we possessed four native breeds about twenty-five years ago. First, the old Irish cow, of small stature, long in the back, and with moderate-sized, wide-spreading, slightly elevated, and projecting horns: they could scarcely be called long-horned, and they certainly were not short-horned. This breed was of al colours, butt principally black and red. They were famous milkers, easily fed, extraordinarily gentle, requiring little care, and were, in truth, the poor the "ould Irish stock," the true Drimin dhu Dheelish; but man's cow, they did not easily fatten, and when beyond a certain age seldom put up flesh. They abounded in all parts of the plain country. Second, the In its native state Kerry, which is somewhat more of a middle horn. it is usually much smaller than the former; in colour it is either red,