III
THE ROMAN CONTINGENT
Although the opinion that the wild white cattle were the untamed descendants of the mighty Urus was at one time widely believed, there grew up a body of dissenters, among whom Owen,[1] Boyd Dawkins,[2] and Dr. J. A. Smith[3] were notable, who were sceptical, first, of our domestic cattle being descended from Bos primigenius; next, of the wild white cattle being descended from the same source; and, lastly, of these same wild white cattle being descended from wild cattle at all. The views of the sceptics were thus boldly expressed in Alston's "Fauna of Scotland," published in 1876: "To me the evidence appears overwhelmingly to prove that the modern park cattle are not wild survivors of the Urus, but are the descendants of a race which had escaped from domestication, and had lived a feral life till they were enclosed in the parks and chases of the mediaeval magnates."
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