BOS PRIMIGENIUS. 501 
vattle of North America: there, on the contrary, the Bison 
is fast disappearing before the advance of the agricultural 
settlers, just as the Aurochs, and its contemperary the 
Urus, have given way before a similar progress in Europe. 
With regard to the great Urus, I believe that this progress 
has caused its utter extirpation, and that our knowledge 
of it is now limited to deductions from its fossil or semi- 
fossil remains. 
The discovery of the skull and horn-cores of this species, 
the Bos primigenius of Bojanus, in the alluvial beds of 
rivers, in sub-turbary lacustrine marls, and in the newer 
tertiary deposits of this country, demonstrates its claim 
to rank with the British Fossil Mammalia, and at the 
same time determines its equal antiquity with the Aurochs. 
The characters of the Bos primigenius, as contrasted 
with the Bison priscus, may be advantageously studied in 
the magnificent specimen of an entire skull (fig. 208) from 
near Athol, Perthshire, now in the British Museum. The 
concave forehead with its slight median longitudinal ridge ; 
the origin of the horns at the extremities of the sharp ridge 
which divides the frontal from the occipital regions ; the 
acute angle, at which these two surfaces of the cranium 
meet to form the above ridge (fig. 210), all identify this 
specimen with the Bos primigenius described by Cuvier,* 
Bojanus,f and Fremery.{ The cores of the horns bend 
at first slightly backward and upward, then downward 
and forward, and finally inward and upward, describing a 
graceful double curvature: they are tuberculate at the 
base, moderately impressed by longitudinal grooves, and 
irregularly perforated. ‘The skull is one yard in length and 
the span of the horn-cores is three feet six inches; but 
* ¢QOssem. Foss.’ iv. p. 150. + * Nova Acta Acad. Nat. Cur.’ xiii. pt. 2. 
+ ©N, Verh. Koninkl.-Nederlandsch Instituut, Derde Deel,’ 1831. 
