Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/298

274 numbers of the bones of this animal in what are probably the remains of a Stone Age lake-dwelling at Crowland. At the great flint implement manufactory at Grimes Graves, near Brandon, the remains of this animal are very plentiful, and belong chiefly to very young calves. It would appear from this that a principal element in the food of these people was milk, and therefore they could not afford to keep the calves, which must have consumed a large portion of what would otherwise have been available for the use of the household.*

Bos primigenius, the gigantic ox called Urus by Caesar, was a grand animal, readily distinguished from the other species by its massive build and larger bones. The fossil remains of the wild animal are found in British palaeolithic deposits, but not in neolithic. t It was, however, domesticated during the late neolithic age in Switzerland and Italy, and co-existed with the smaller Bos longifrons. It was re-introduced into England about a. d. 449, and eventually took the place of the smaller species, except in those parts of the country which, from their mountainous character, afforded shelter to the oppressed Britons. I The Urus seems to have become wild in Britain, and from this species the few herds of wild white cattle which still live in a semi-wild state are descended. Gilpin says, " We cannot positively fix the time when these creatures ceased to exist in this island in a state of freedom ; but we can at least say that they did so exist within three hundred years." § Herds of this breed are recorded to have existed in a semi-wild state at Kincardine, Stirling, Cumbernauld (Dum- bartonshire), Cadzow (Lanarkshire), Drumlanrig (Dumfriesshire), Chillingham (Northumberland), Bishop Auckland (Durham), Burton Constable and Gisburne (Yorkshire), Lyme (Cheshire), Chartley (Staffordshire), and Wollaton (Nottingham). Those at Burton Constable were all destroyed by a distemper. || When Bewick published his ' History of Quadrupeds,' at the close of the last century, he was enabled to show that ony five herds then existed, namely, those at Chillingham, Wollaton, Gisburne-in-Craven, Lyme,

Greenwell, "Grimes Graves," Journ. Etb. Soc, vol. ii., p. 431 (1871).

A magnificent articulated skeleton of Bos primigenius, found in Burwell Fen, is preserved in the Zoological Museum at Cambridge, where may also he seen the greater portion of a skull of another specimen, in which a stone celt was found and still remains imbedded.

Skertchly, 'Fenland, Past and Present,' p. :I44.

§ 'Forest Scenery,' Lauder's edition, 1834, vol. ii., p. 281.


 * Id., p. 283.