Page:On the Ancient and Modern Races of Oxen in Ireland (IA jstor-20489834).pdf/8

71 crooked homed Irish, but were comparatively few in number. In colour they were either dun, black, or white, but very rarely mottled. They were not bad milkers, were remarkably docile, and were consequently much used for draught and ploughing. Of the four examples of the crania of neat cattle which I have now placed before you, the most beautiful is the straight-horned,—broad in the face, flat on the forehead, nearly level between the horns, with but slight projecting orbits, short, thick slugs or horn-cores, rising but little above the occipital crest, and turning slightly inwards like some of the best short-horned bulls of the present day. It is eighteen inches long in the face, and nineteen from tip to tip of horn-core. This was found at Dunshaughlin, and is evidently a domesticated descendant of the ancient wild Bos longifrons. It is a cranium of surpassing beauty, and resembles in the most remarkable manner the ox-heads carved upon the friezes of Grecian temples,—somewhat conical in the face, with short, straight horns, very broad at the base, and not more than eight or ten inches long, having force, dignity, and mildness expressed in even the dead bone. Were we to wreathe this head with a garland of flowers, we would have before us a perfect example of those taurine embellishments sculptured upon the metopes of the Parthenon during the best days of Athenian architecture. This animal would appear to have been the creature used in sacrifice by the early Greeks, and also by the Hebrews, and other sacrificing nations. We have no specimen of this native race