2 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 
Prof. Owen * later made this the chief distinction between the bison and 
the ox. In the bisons the short premaxillaries do not rise to join the 
nasals, and therefore six bones enter into the formation of the external nasal 
opening instead of four, as is the case in Bos and Bubalus. Owen also calls 
attention to the projecting orbital processes, which with the lachrymal and 
malar processes form a projecting orbital cylinder. The ribs, Owen also 
says, “never exceed in number thirteen pairs in any species of Bos proper ; 
[while] the European bison or aurochs has fourteen, and the American bison 
fifteen pairs of ribs.” The last statement, however, is erroneous, the Ameri- 
can bison having the same number of pairs of ribs and the same number 
of lumbar vertebree as the European, notwithstanding numerous statements 
to the contrary. ft 
* Descrip. Cat. Ost. Series in Mus. Roy. Coll. Surgeons of England, p. 622, 1853. 
+ This oft-repeated misstatement affords a striking instance of the persistency of error. In this case 
‘the error had a singular origin, and its repetition is to some degree justifiable. The first skeleton of the 
American bison known in Europe was that obtained from a living specimen received at the Paris 
Menagerie in 1819, and which was described by Cuvier in his Ossemens Fossiles (tome IV, p. 118, of 
third edition). This specimen — one instance probably in thousands — chanced to have jifteen pairs of 
ribs, and consequently but four lumbar vertebra. Cuvier of course called attention to this fact as afford- 
ing an important distinction between the American and European bisons. Says Cuvier: “ Quant au reste 
du squelette, la femelle envoyée d’Amerique par M. Milbert a quinze paires de cétes, tandis que V’aurochs 
de Pologne n’en a que quatorze, et les autres beeufs treize seulement. Cette femelle n’a en revanche que 
quatre vertébres lombaires, tandis que P’aurochs en a cinq, et les autres beufs six.” It is hence not strange 
that mere compilers, and even authorities of some eminence, should for a time perpetuate the error, espe- 
cially since it was many years before a second skeleton of the American bison fell under the eye of a 
comparative anatomist. Yet it seems a little strange to find it repeated by leading English anatomists 
and zodlogists for many years after several of the leading museums of Great Britain contained skeletons 
of the American bison. Owen, as late as 1866, in his great work on the Comparative Anatomy of the 
Vertebrates (Vol. II, p. 462), says: ‘The European bison has fourteen dorsal and five lumbar vertebre ; 
the American bison has fifteen dorsal and four lumbar, and this is the extreme reached, in the Ruminant 
order, of movable ribs, equalling in number those of the Hippopotamus.” 
Hamilton Smith in Griffith’s Cuvier (Vol. IV, p. 404 and Vol. V, p. 374), published in 1825, of course 
gave the same number as Cuvier, as did also Fischer, in 1828, in his Synopsis Mammalium (p. 496) ; 
and Wagner (Suppl. to Schreber’s Sauget., V, 472), in 1855. Dr. J. E. Gray, in 1852, in his Catalogue of 
the Mammalia of the British Museum (Part III, Ungulata Furcipeda, p. 35), says under Bison, “ Ribs 
fourteen or fifteen pairs,” although there were then two skeletons in the British Museum. Edward 
Blythe, in Orr’s translation of Cuvier’s Animal Kingdom (p. 143), in 1846 and in 1851, reiterated the 
same error, as did Owen in 1846, in his British Fossil Mammals and Birds, as above cited, and in the 
Proceedings of the Zodlogical Society of London for 1848 (p. 130), as it was also by authors of lesser fame. 
Gerrard, in 1862, in his Catalogue of the Bones of Mammals in the British Museum (p. 230), gave for 
the first time the correct number. Lilljeborg, in 1874 (Fauna 6fver Sveriges och Norges Ryggradsdjur), 
refers to Owen’s statement on this point, and cites the number given by Gerrard. Riitimeyer in 1867 
also refers to a skeleton in Amsterdam which presented only fourteen pairs of ribs and five lumbar ver- 
tebree (Versuch einer Natiiralischen Geschichte des Rindes, IJ, p. 68). 
