even though they are caught young. Their horns differ much in size, shape, and kind from those of our cattle. They are anxiously sought after, the lips mounted with silver, and used as cups at the most abundant banquets."
The final step was from Caesar's Urus to a British relative whose occasional remains have been found in primeval Scots bogs and East Anglian fens and in alluvial and lacustrine deposits whose hospitality they have shared with the elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and other aforetime inhabitants of England and Scotland since Neolithic times. This ox was of gigantic proportions. McKenny Hughes[1] describes it as "a large, gaunt beast with a long, narrow face." Fleming says,[2] "Many of the skulls which occur in marl-pits in Scotland exhibit dimensions superior to those of the largest domestic breed. A skull in my possession measures twenty-seven inches and a half in length, and eleven inches and a half across the orbits." Owen, in describing a skull in the British Museum found near Atholl in Perthshire, says, "The skull is one yard in length and the span of the horncores is three feet six inches."[3] The accompanying drawings, in McKenny Hughes's paper, from an ox of this kind "found in Burwell Fen, near
- ↑ "On the more important Breeds of Cattle which have been recognised in the British Isles," 1896, p. 6.
- ↑ "History of British Animals," 1828, p. 24.
- ↑ "British Fossil Mammals," 1846, p. 501.
