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. The wolf, of course, is
common; wild cat, marten, badger, and otter all would expect; but not
so the beaver, which nevertheless is abundant in the peat; and damage
enough the busy fellows must have done, cutting trees, damming
streams, flooding marshes, and like selfish speculators in all ages,
sacrificing freely the public interest to their own. Here and there
are found the skulls of bears, in one case that of a polar bear, ice-
drifted; and one of a walrus, probably washed in dead after a storm.

Beautiful, after their kind, were these fen-isles, in the eyes of the
monks who were the first settlers in the wilderness.

The author of the History of Ramsey grows enthusiastic, and, after
the manner of old monks, somewhat bombastic also, as he describes the
lonely isle which got its name from the solitary ram who had wandered
thither, either in some extreme drought or over the winter ice, and
never able to return, was found, fat beyond the wont of rams, feeding