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THE AMEEICAIT BISOXS. 



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 Btibahcs. Owen also calls 

 attention to the projecting orbital processes, which w^ith 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 vertebra as the European, notwithstanding numerous statements 

 to the contrary.! 



* Descrip. Cat. Ost. Series in Mus. Eoy. ColL Surgeons of England, p. 622, 1853. 



f 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 hy 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 vertebras. Cuvier of course called attention to this fact as afford- 

 in'>' an important distinction between the American and European bisons. Says Cuvier : " Quant au reste 

 du sfpielette, la femelle envoye'e d'Amerique par M. Milbert a quinze paires de cotes, tandis que Paurochs 

 de Pologne n'cn a que quatorze, et les autres bceufs treize seulement. Cette femelle n'a en revanche que 

 cpatre vertebres lombaires, tandis que I'aurochs en a cinq, et les autres bceufs 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 



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comparative anatomist. Yet it seems a little strange to find it repeated by leading English anatomists 

 and zoologists 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. 11, p. 462), says: ''The European bison has fourteen dorsal and five lumbar vertebra3 ; 



* 



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 liis 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, **Eibs 

 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 Zoological 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 ofver Sveriges och ISTorges Ryggradsdjur), 

 refers to Owen's statement on this point, and cites the number given by Gerrard. Kutimeyer in 1867 

 also refers to a skeleton in Amsterdam which presented only fourteen pairs of ribs and five lumbar ver- 

 tebrse (Versuch einer Natiiralischen Geschichte des Kindes, II, p. 68). 



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