James Wilson

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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 has been reconstructed again and again from his resurrected skeleton. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”