ion of Ireland, and that this was several centuries before the
Christian era, the distinctive name by which it had been known might
well have died out and become extinct also, among a people unacquainted
with letters. Or if a dim tradition of the animal and of its name still
lingered here and there, it might well be omitted from a catalogue which
professed to give the creatures actually collected in a living state at
a given period. It would have been interesting to have been able to
identify the Great Elk, but its introduction would have been a glaring
anachronism.

The enumeration of nearly a hundred and sixty quadrupeds and birds
either indigenous to or naturalised in Ireland at so early a period,
possesses, I say, a peculiar interest.

If the editor's suggestion is correct, that the _Echtach_ was a bovine
animal, then we have three distinct mentions of this family in the
poem,--the Wild Oxen, the Echtachs, and the Bull and White Cow. The
second and third of these were probably domesticated animals; the first
one expressly "Wild." Now at least five distinct species of Oxen are
known to have inhabited Europe and the British Isles during the later
periods of the Tertiary era, which have been named respectively, _Bison
priscus_, _Bos primigenius_, _frontosus_ and _longifrons_, and _Ovibos
moschatus_. Of these, skulls of _Bos frontosus_ and _B. longifrons_ have
been dug up in some numbers in Ireland. Some of these bear, in the
perforation of the forehead, evident proof of having been slaughtered
_secundum artem_, and therefore of having been domesticated. But one
large skull of the _longifrons_ type, now in the Museum of the Royal
Irish Academy, has a cut in the forehead, into which can be accurately
fitted several of the narrow bronze "celts," or arrow-heads so
frequently dug up in Ireland; a pretty fair proof that this animal was
killed by the hunter's arrow, and was therefore wild.

No bovine animals of the true taurine race are now known to exist in an
aboriginally wild state; but at the epoch of our earliest historical
knowledge of central and western Europe it was far otherwise. Caesar,
describing, under the name of _Urus_, certain wild oxen of the great
Hercynian forest, says, "These Uri are little inferior to elephants in
size, but are bulls in their nature, colour, and figure. Great is their
strength, and great their swiftness, nor do they spare man or beast when
once they have caught sight of him. These, when