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XXVII. On the Osteological relations observable among a few Species of the Bovine Family . 

 By Walter Adam, M.D. Communicated by Robert Brown, Esq., V.P.L.S. 



Read June 6, 1854. 



IN a communication formerly submitted to the Linnean Society*, an attempt was made 

 to trace throughout one large animal the identities and variations of osteological dimen- 

 sion characteristic of a species. The animal selected for that inquiry was the Camel of 

 Bactria. 



It is now intended, by an osteological comparison of some species in a cognate group of 

 animals, to exemplify the more striking resemblances and deviations in form which are 

 exhibited among the components of a zoological family. The indulgence of access to the 

 British Museum has enabled the writer to examine at leisure nine osteological specimens 

 contained there, of the Mammalian family of Bovines ; three pairs, male and female : — 

 the Bos Bantiger of Java, the Bibos Gaurus of Nepal, and the Bison of North America; 

 along with three separate males, — the Aurochs (Bison) of Lithuania, the Caffre Buffalo 

 of the Cape of Good Hope, and the Short-horned Buffalo of the Gambia, the last a young 

 animal. The Bovines, equally with the Camel, seemed deserving of study, on account of 

 their value to Man. 



As a standard of measurement within the animal itself, the basilar length of the 

 cranium was found to be most eligible in the Camel ; the same dimension, similarly 

 divided into 72 parts, has been continued in the Bovines. Though no single dimen- 

 sion can be assumed to be invariable, the basilar length of the cranium, notwithstand- 

 ing its rostral termination in the intermaxillaries, will admit of preference in many other 

 animals. 



The breadths of the head in the Camel occupy three sets of distances from the mesial 

 plane, ending with the greatest breadth — the orbital. Subsequent to those three dimen- 

 sions of breadth there are four cranial lengths, beginning with the shortest — the palatal. 

 Thus placed in order, the seven dimensions of the head in the Camel are by six equal 

 decrements successively reduced from the greatest length. Bovine species being nume- 

 rous, with a corresponding scale of diversity, indications of a fixed normal type could not 

 in Bovines, as a family, be so decided as in the almost solitary Camel. Bovine osteolo- 

 gical dimensions will be seen to vary not a little. From size of parts — not always greater 

 in the male — the male and the female bones might even be thought to belong to animals 

 quite distinct. Still the cranial lengths of the Bovines, without such regular progression 

 as in the Camel, show a degree of similarity. In all, the length of the head approaches, 

 in the Gour it attains, the cranial extreme of the Camel. The very different character of 



* Linnean Transactions, vol. xvi. p. 525. 



