Fig. 45.—Cranium of the Crom-adharach, or Crumpled-horn Ox.
[Fig. 45] represents a cranium of the Crom-adharach or Crumpled-horn, which, judging by its remains, appears to have been the most numerous variety. This magnificent head of a bull of the race is “in point of size as fine a specimen as has yet been found: it is twenty-three and a-half inches long, and eight inches across the forehead, which has been broken in by some blunt instrument, probably in slaughtering. The horn-cores are not so large at the base, but more than twice as long as those of the “straight-horned” race; they are curved considerably inwards, so that the tips of the horns, when perfect, must have approached much nearer than their bases. Each horn-core was, when perfect, about eleven inches long.” This head, together with many similar crania, came from the crannog of Lough Gur, county Limerick.
Fig. 46. Cranium of the Gearr-adharach, or Short-horned Ox.
Fig. 47. Cranium of the Maol, or Hornless Ox.
The third class, or “short-horn”, had long narrow faces, with exceedingly small horn-cores curving abruptly inwards. The cranium of one specimen (female) measured seventeen inches in length of face, six inches across the forehead, and eleven inches from tip to tip of horn-core. [Fig. 46] gives a good illustration of this breed, which was abundant. The fourth class, the Maol, or Myleen (the hornless or bald), differs in nothing from those of the present day, save that it appears to have been of smaller size than its modern representative. The average length of face is about seventeen inches, by about eight inches across the orbits. Almost all the heads of this variety presented by Wilde to the R. I. A. came from the crannog of Dunshaughlin: they exhibit a remarkable protuberance or frontal crest.