General Zoological Changes. 255 



a cow. But these points might, no doubt, have been settled 

 in a very precise manner, by a comparison with the skins of 

 zubr-cows, which are probably nowhere to be found in great- 

 er variety than in the Museum of the Academy, and of which 

 there exists a specimen in that of Wilna. The presence of 

 a black stripe along the mesial line of the back, as well as the 

 difference in the hoofs, which Mr. de Baer says are much 

 shorter in what he calls the Caucasian variety of the Bos u- 

 rusy are, however, enough in themselves to cause a doubt of 

 the specific identity of the two animals. Without insisting 

 too much on the perfect equality of wild species having a ve- 

 ry extensive habitat, (though Dr. Poppig found, for example 

 the fox quite the same in Chili and Pennsylvania), I would 

 be allowed to remark, that the dark stripe along the back is 

 one of the constant characters of several species, and that in 

 a whole genus, (Equus), the stripes of the skin form one of 

 the distinguishing characters. But what militates even more 

 against Mr. de Baer's opinion, is the comparative shortness 

 of the hoof in the Caucasian animal. We may, no doubt, ob- 

 serve, in domesticated animals that have followed man to lo- 

 calities not originally their own, a considerable deviation of 

 that organ from its primary type; as, for instance, the hoof of 

 horses bred in mountainous districts, is considerably narrow- 

 er and shorter than in the flat and soft-hoofed horses reared 

 on the marshy plains near Madgeburg ; but assuredly this 

 analogy does not apply to wild animals, nor especially to the 

 Bos urus, if it did live in Caucasia, where the swampy forests, 

 which are its natural abode, as proved, not only by several of 

 its habits, but particularly by the herbaceous plants to which 

 it gives a decided preference, as we shall see hereafter, which 

 exist in such profusion in the valleys, that it would rather have 

 suffered itself to be extirpated there, than have taken refuge in 

 the mountains. Thus the zebra is never found on the Kar- 

 roo mountains, but always in the plains around them ; while 

 the douw, or mountain horse, (Equus montanus, Burch.), ne- 

 ver descends from the same mountains into the plain. Yet 

 the specific difference of these two animals rests chiefly on 

 the presence or absence of a few stripes of the skin, as well 

 as on the comparative flatness or shortness of hoof. There- 

 fore until the skeleton of the Caucasian Bos shall have been 

 compared with that of the Bos urus, I think we may consider 

 the two creatures as bearing much the same relation to each 

 other, as the Equus montanus and the E. Zebra.* 



* Mr. Ed. Eichwald, who, after having made the Bos urus of Lithuania 

 the object of his special study, has travelled in Mount Caucasus, could 

 Vol. II.— No. 17. n. s. y 



