352 Prof, Nilsson on the extinct and existing 
Description.—As far as we yet know, this is the smallest of 
all the Ox tribe which lived in a wild state in our portion of the 
globe. To judge from the skeleton, it was 5 feet 4 inches long 
from the nape to the end of the rump bone, the head about 1 
foot 4 inches, so that the whole length must have been 6 feet 8 
inches. From the slender make of its bones, its body must 
‘ather have resembled a deer than our common tame ox ; its legs 
at the extremities are certainly somewhat shorter and also thinner 
than those of a crown-deer (full-antler’d red-deer). The skull is 
long and narrow, even more so than that of the deer; the fore- 
head upwards (over the eyes) flattened, with an edge going along 
the frontal seam, which is most prominent upwards, and ends 
with a rounded indenting backwards ; between the eyes is a more 
or less considerable depression, above which there is often a 
rising, and beneath which lies the incision for the nasal bones, 
which go right wp to the line, drawn between the lower borders 
of the orbits. [Thus the frontal bones are not longer in this 
species than they are in the Urus or Taurus.]| The horn- 
cores small, cylindrical, short, curved only im one direction 
forwards, sometimes, though seldom, downwards in the plane 
of the forehead; the nasal bones in front two-pointed, with a 
deep small intermediate cavity ; the lacrymal bones flat, broadest 
in the middle, narrower in the orbital and nasal parts: there 
is always a rhombal opening between the frontal, nasal, and 
lacrymal bones. The form of the temporal cavity behind 
transverse-obtuse, before oblique-pomted; its hinder part (to 
the angle above the joint of the under jaws) only one-fourth 
broader than the fore-part. N.B. Herein it resembles the tame 
Ox, but differs visibly from the B. frontosus and Urus. The 
anterior palatine apertures lancet-shaped, at the back oblique 
inward-pointed, the back ones lie between the palate bones ; 
the nape transverse, up- 
wards with a vertical in- 
denting, downwards with -_ 
a vertical edge over the 
circular foramen of the 
nape (fig. 7). The skull 
Fig. 7. 
of this species varies con- _Z\ YQ 
siderably in size and even ‘oad AM \ 
something in form, ac- “WA 
cording to its age and sex. UY 
I have in my possession 
the fragment of a fore- 
head with horn-cores of a very old individual which secms 
to have been a bull; the distance between the horn-cores 
upwards is 5 inches 8 lines, and the circumference of the horn- 
Bos longifrons. 
