Page:On the Ancient and Modern Races of Oxen in Ireland (IA jstor-20489834).pdf/7

70 in the west, thus proving that they existed here in what may be termed our middle ages. The skull and horn-core of one of those which I figured in Hall's "Ireland" many years ago is here represented. There is also a portion of the frontal bone and horn-core of this long-horned breed, found in a bog in the county of Limerick, now in the Museum of Trinity College. Were one to strip the skull of one of these animals of its horn-cores, it would, from the narrow forehead and projecting crest, resemble in a most remarkable manner the cranium of the maol, or hornless breed. I regret to say that the race is nearly extinct; the only possessor of any that I now know is Lord De Freyne, who has still a stock at Frenchpark, and lately exhibited a pair at the Royal Dublin Society's Cattle Show. They have been replaced upon the plains of Ratheroghan and Moylurg by the modern imported and much prized short-horn—a beast with a thin silky skin, short fine hair, and which comes to perfection, and consequently gives a return to the breeder or feeder, in one-half the time in which the old long-horns did. But it cannot be denied that it is of a comparatively delicate constitution, and must, from the physical circumstances which I have mentioned, be more liable to disease than its hardy, slow-growing, thick-skinned, easily fed predecessor.

I know it will be considered a heresy, and probably presumptuous of me, to offer any opinion upon this subject; but I would propound this question to the grazier, and also to the political economist:—Taking the slow growth, but great size, strong hide, little care required with, and comparative immunity from disease of this long-horned stock on the one side; and, upon the other, the great original first cost, the rapid growth to saleable perfection, and also the quick, but perhaps unwholesome, and certainly unnaturally induced powers of reproduction, together with the great susceptibility of fattening, the thin hide, the winter care, both of housing and provender it required, and the very great susceptibility of disease, both sporadic and epidemic,—and then strike the balance, and I am not sure that it would not turn in favour of our native stock. Certain I am that the beef would be more wholesome. Fashion, however, may have had its influence in this matter. But we need not wonder at £250 being given for a yearling calf, when twenty guineas was but very lately considered a moderate price for a Cochin cock during the epidemic of the 'fowl fever,' which raged so extensively in Great Britain and Ireland.

The fourth is the Maol or Moyle, the polled, or hornless breed, similar to the Angus of the neighbouring kingdom, called Myleen in Connaught, Mael in Munster, and Mwool in Ulster. In size they were inferior to the foregoing, although larger than the Kerry, or even the old