Bovine Animals of Scandinavia. 423 
to him. Hence we may conclude that the Urus and Bison never 
lived together in the same tracts; perhaps seldom in the same 
forest. aed tesa 
Having thus, from the fossil.bones which are found in our 
post-phocene strata, given a short account of the Wild Ox, which 
with us is now extinct, it remains to speak of our tame horned 
cattle, of which several perceptibly different races occur with us ; 
and, as far as we are able, to indicate from which wild species 
each tame race chiefly derives its origin. These investigations 
are however rendered particularly difficult by the circumstance, 
that the tame races by crossings are so mingled, that their ori- 
ginal stock is sometimes scarcely to be recognised. 
As a begining we may notice, that it is solely from the di- 
vision of the Ox family which have a flat forehead with the horn- 
cores sitting at tle extremity of the edge between the forehead 
and the nape, that our tame cattle spring; and that the ox with 
a convex forehead, the Bison, which no one could ever make to 
pair with a tame cow, has not in the least contributed to the 
formation of any tame cattle. Besides, we can take for a given 
and general rule, that the tame race is always less than the wild 
species from which it springs. 
We believe we come nearest to the truth in this difficult sub- 
ject, if we assume— 
1. That the large-sized lowland races, with flat foreheads, and 
for the most part large horns, descend from the Urus (Bos pri- 
migenius) and at length came mto the country with a race of 
people who immigrated from the south and west. 
2. The somewhat small-growth highland races, with high oe- 
ciput and small or no horns, descend from the High-necked Ox 
(Bos frontosus). 
3. How far the small-grown hornless Finn ko race (Noring, 
pp. 218-229) descends from the Dwarf Ox (Bos longifrons, 
Owen), may be more fully determined through future investiga- 
tions. 
Notices of the Wild Oxen of Britain in the Historians of the 
Middle Ages. 
In the third volume of the ‘ Annals,’ p. 356, will be found, besides 
the notice from a MS. record communicated by Sir P. Grey Eger- 
ton, a passage also from the Lives of the Abbots of St. Albans by 
Matthew Paris, in which he mentions the wild cattle of the forests 
of the Chiltern district. ‘To these may be added the following :— 
Fitzstephen, whose Descriptio nobilissime civitatis Londonie was 
written about the year 1174, thus describes the country beyond the 
suburbs: ‘‘ Proxime patet ingens foresta, saltus nemorosi, ferarum 
latebre, cervorum, damarum, aprorum, et taurorum sylvestrium,”’ 
