The gigantic ox, Bos primigenius, was still there, though there is no
record of him in monkish tales. But with him had appeared (not
unknown toward the end of the gravel age) another ox, smaller and
with shorter horns, Bos longifrons; which is held to be the ancestor
of our own domestic short-horns, and of the wild cattle still
preserved at Chillingham and at Cadzow. The reindeer had
disappeared, almost or altogether. The red deer, of a size beside
which the largest Scotch stag is puny, and even the great Carpathian
stag inferior, abound; so does the roe, so does the goat, which one
is accustomed to look on as a mountain animal. In the Woodwardian
Museum there is a portion of a skull of an ibex--probably Capra
sibirica--which was found in the drift gravel at Fulbourne. Wild
sheep are unknown. The horse occurs in the peat; but whether wild or
tame, who can tell? Horses enough have been mired and drowned since
the Romans set foot on this island, to account for the presence of
horses' skulls, without the hypothesis of wild herds, such as
doubtless existed in the gravel times.
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