102 Mr. R. I. Pocock on some 
the latter into Hurope and its subsequent interbreeding 
with the former. 
Proposition 2 may pass as probably true*. Proposition 
3 appears to me to be equally probably untrue ; while propo- 
sitions 1 and 4 are open to dispute in the sense that they are 
founded on facts susceptible of other interpretations. 
Il. THE BANTENG-DESCENT OF THE ZEBUS. 
Criticising this theory first of all from the ethnological, 
and admittedly therefore from a purely theoretical, standpoint, 
it appears to me improbable that a species domesticated by 
the Javanese belonging to the Malay stock of the Mongolian 
race of man was the ancestral form of the cattle of the people 
of India who belong to a different race. More likely does it 
seem that the ancestors of modern humped cattle were brought 
to India by invaders entering the country by way of the 
Punjab and Sind, unless an autochthonous species, now 
extinct as a wild animal, was found ready to hand for the 
purpose in India itself. 
There are reasons for believing that the humped cattle have 
been a domesticated type for a very long time, certainly fora 
few thousand years B.C. So far as I am aware, there is no 
evidence, one way or the other, of the antiquity of the banteng 
as a domesticated animal; but if Riitimeyer’s theory, sup- 
ported by Keller and Lydekker, that the banteng was the 
ancestor of the zebu be true, its domestication must be assigned 
toa much earlier date to account for the acquisition of tlie 
distinctive peculiarities of the zebu. Yet, if this be so, it is 
surely strange that the domesticated banteng of Java and 
Bali differs in no important points from wild members of the 
species, still found in Java and Further India. This fact 
appears to me to be strongly suggestive of the conclusion that 
the domestication of the banteng has been of comparatively 
* This appears to be Prof. Ewart’s opinion (P. Z. 8. 1911, i. p. 281). 
In coneluding his study of the skulls of Roman cattle obtained at New- 
stead, he wrote :—‘‘ Hence it may be said that up to at least the Bronze 
Age the majority of the domestic cattle of Europe were the descendants 
ot Bos primigentus—some being nearly pure descendants of the imported 
‘Celtic’ shorthorn breed, while others were pure or nearly pure descen- 
dants of the indigenous wild urus (Bos taurus primigenius).” But since 
he assumes it to be probable that the ‘ Celtic” shorthorn was itself a 
domesticated dwarfed descendant of an Asiatic variety of Bos primigenius, 
there is clearly only one wild species invclved in the ancestry. The 
evidence which excludes other breeds of cattle from this genealogy does 
not appeal to me as at all convincing. 
