The evolution of British cattle and the fashioning of breeds/Bos Longifrons

by James Wilson

II

BOS LONGIFRONS

Having driven off Bos primigenius, we ought now to follow up the wild white bull that led us off the scent; but it will be more convenient to leave him alone for the present and pick him up again in his proper place.

We are told by those who collect and consider the records of the past—the geologist, the archaeologist, and the historian—that the animals that have lived in Britain and Western Europe at one time and another have all migrated thither from the East. Bos primigenius, who was one of the early arrivals, came westward just before the Pleistocene, or Glacial period—"a prolonged period of cold broken up by shorter periods of milder climate "^[1]—and he lived through that period and several sections of the next, in whose elucidation the geologist and the archaeologist combine.

The earliest signs of man appear about the beginning of this next period, which is conveniently broken into sections or ages marked off from each other by the degree of civilisation to which man had attained: viz. the Eolithic Age in which man makes use of only such tools as he picks up that are already shaped by Nature's hand, the Palaeolithic Age in which he chips and fashions stones to suit his purpose, the Neolithic Age in which he works stones into shape by rubbing and polishing, and the succeeding Ages of Bronze and Iron.

The man of the Neolithic Age was not only a far later arrival than those who had lived before him, but his civilisation was at a very much higher level. According to Boyd Dawkins, "The population" of Britain "was probably large, divided into tribal communities possessed of fixed habitations, and living principally on their flocks and herds, acquainted with agriculture, and subsisting in a lesser degree by hunting and fishing. The arts of spinning, weaving, mining, and pottery-making were known, and that of boat-building had advanced sufficiently far to allow of voyages being made from France to Britain, and from Britain to Ireland."^[2] That man still hunted the beasts of the forest is proved by the ox in the Woodwardian Museum "with a polished stone implement sticking in its skull," but the state of his larder depended no longer upon his success with the Urus, since another much smaller ox had come westward with Neolithic man, and, according to Boyd Dawkins and Rütimeyer, was already in the domesticated state.^[3] At any rate, the remains of this little ox, which Owen called Bos longifrons because of the great depth of his forehead, have been found in Britain and Western Europe in all kinds of deposits from Neolithic down to the beginning of historic time; and, if he was not brought into Britain in the domestic state, he eventually became the domestic ox of the pre-Roman inhabitants, for no other kind was brought into the country previous to the Roman Invasion. Cattle could only have been imported from the opposite shores of France and Belgium, and there they belonged to the self-same race. Bos longifrons "is the native breed with which we must start in all our speculations as to the origin and development of British oxen. The Romans found that breed here and no other."^[4]

Bos longifrons, from Sweden.
	[From Nilsson.

Bos longifrons—from Switzerland
	From Rütimeyer.

Bos longifrons has been reconstructed again and again from his resurrected skeleton. From Swedish skeletons Nilsson describes him thus^[5]: "This is the smallest of all the ox tribe which lived in a wild state in our portion of the globe. To judge from the skeleton, it was 5 feet 4 inches long from the nape to the end of the rump bone, the head about 1 foot 4 inches, so that the whole length must have been 6 feet 8 inches. From the slender make of its bones, its body must rather have resembled a deer than our common tame ox; its legs at the extremities are certainly somewhat shorter and also thinner than those of a crown-deer (full-antler'd red deer)." Rütimeyer calls it the peat cow, and, from specimens found in Swiss late dwellings, describes it thus^[6]: " The race which clearly predominated through the whole Stone Age and was found chiefly, though not exclusively, in the formations which we, upon other grounds, reckon among the oldest in Wangen and Mooseedorf, I may safely call the Peat Race, or the Peat Cow. Its chief characteristic, as shown by its remains, apart meantime from the skull, is the small length and height of its body, and the exceptionally short but remarkably fine and delicate limbs, right from the shoulder to the extreme terminal phalanges, which apparently carried very small hoofs."

Bos longifrons, from Burwell Fen, Cambridge
	[From McKenny Hughes.

From British and Irish skeletons, Owen writes^[7] that "This small but ancient species or variety of ox belongs, like our present cattle, to the subgenus Bos, as is shown by the form of the forehead, and by the origin of the horns from the extremities of the occipital ridge; but it differs from the contemporary Bos primigenius, not only by its great inferiority of size, being smaller than the ordinary breeds of domestic cattle, but also by the horns being proportionally

Bos longifrons, from Ireland
	[From Owen.

much smaller and shorter, as well as differently directed, and by the forehead being less concave. It is indeed, usually flat; and the frontal bones extend further beyond the orbits, before they join the nasal bones, than in Bos primigenius. The horn-cores of the Bos longifrons describe a single short curve outwards and forwards in the plane of the forehead, rarely rising above that plane, more rarely sinking below it: the cores have a very rugged exterior, and are usually a little flattened at their upper part." McKenny Hughes, also from British and Irish skeletons, says^[8] that Bos longifrons was a very small animal; probably not larger than a Kerry cow. It was remarkable for the height of its forehead above its orbits, for its strongly developed occipital region, and its small horns curved inward and forward."

There have also been speculations as to the colours of both these ancient oxen, but in neither case have they been based upon sure foundations. As regards Bos primigenius, the foundations were absolutely unsafe, for Caesar's hint is of no value, even if we knew the colour that was in his mind when he wrote of the Uri that "in kind, colour, and shape they are bulls "; nor can the colour of an animal so long extinct be inferred from the great variety among the larger European breeds of the present day, were it even clear that these are the descendants of Bos primigenius. As to the colour of the pre-historic Bos longifrons, speculators are upon much safer ground, since many of his descendants are still alive. But there is always the difficulty of eliminating the colours of intruding races, or, of intruding breeds, in the case of some particular branch of the Bos longifrons race. Werner,^[9] who had the continental Bos longifrons chiefly in his mind, "describes the breed as a small form, of slender, almost graceful build. The hide is of a uniform yellowish-grey, grey, or brown tint, white patches being uncommon. Other characteristics are, a lighter streak round the muzzle, a light iris, a black stripe down the back, the lighter colour of the belly and the inner side of the legs, the occurrence of lighter coloured hair within the outer ear, and long hairs on the rim of it. The skin and muzzle are always black in colour."^[10] While Boyd Dawkins, who dealt with the British Bos longifrons, came to the conclusion that the breed was usually of a dark colour probably black, red, and brindled.^[11] These authors inferred the colours of the original Bos longifrons from the colours of separate branches of his presumed descendants, while Boyd Dawkins also took into account some specimens of hair which have been found in prehistoric deposits. Both failed to allow for the effects of variation or of intruding breeds or races. With Werner's conclusions we have no immediate concern; but, as we shall see later, the reds and the brindles which Boyd Dawkins took to be the original natives of Britain were really intruders.

To show that the British variety of Bos longifrons was black, we must anticipate some part of what is to follow, on the understanding that what is now taken on credit will be made good hereafter. It is a well-known fact in human history that, as one race retires before another, the retiring and the invading races are usually accompanied by some part of their live stock, and above all by their cattle which, in earlier times, not only afforded food and clothing but took a chief share in tilling the earth, and thus were an outstanding necessity in man's existence. The Helvetii, and Cassievelaunus, the British chief who drove his people and their flocks into the woods on the approach of the Romans in Cæsar's time, and the Spaniards, the English, and the Boers in recent times might be referred to as examples. When the Celtic people retired before the English they carried their cattle along with them into the west and the north; and till this day, the cattle in the Celtic parts of Britain, which are descended from the cattle of the pre-Roman Celts, and through them from the pre-historic Bos longifrons, are predominantly black, and, as we look farther and farther into the past, we find the territory of these black cattle larger, and the regularity of their colour increasing. Till nearly the end of the seventeenth century, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and the north of England were almost fully occupied by black cattle, among which there was a sprinkling of reds, whites, and brindles, and an occasional dun; in still earlier times the cattle of these other colours were rare enough to be of higher value. But the alien colours can all be accounted for. The whites were brought in by the Romans, the reds by the English, the brindles were the result of another importation, while the duns were one of the many things for which we have to thank the Norsemen.

1. Sir Archibald Geikie's "Class-Book of Geology," 1897.
2. "Early Man in Britain," 1880, p. 290.
3. Ibid., p. 261, and "Encyc. Brit.," v. 245.
4. McKenny Hughes, op. cit.
5. "Annals and Magazine of Natural History," vol. iv. second series, 1849, p. 352.
6. Fauna der Pfahlbauten.
7. "British Fossil Mammals and Birds," p. 510.
8. Op. cit., p. 9.
9. "Ein Beitrage zur Geschichte des Europaischen Hausrindes," 1892.
10. Quoted from McKenny Hughes, op. cit.'
11. "Cave Hunting."