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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 Boyines, 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. 
