-.r r--^^. •. 



.^ 



4 



THE AMEEICAN BISOKS. 



r ■ 



H -\ 



y 



i, t 



-i 



7 



found in the bed of a small creek about a dozen miles north of Bip:-bone 

 Lick, Kentucky, and consisted of a part of a cranium with a considerable 

 portion of one horn-core attached. This specimen was presented by Samuel 

 Brown of Kentucky to the American Philosophical Society, and was first 

 described and figured by Kembrandt Peale, in a paper entitled "Account 

 of Some Remains of a Species of gigantic Oxen found in America and other 



r 



parts of the World." * This specimen Peale believed indicated a species of 

 the ox tribe of gigantic proportions whose horns must have had a spread of 

 nearly twelve feet, — a conjecture that subsequent discoveries have proved 

 well founded. 



I 



This fragment, now deposited in the Museum of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences of Philadelphia, was repeatedly figured and described by different 

 authors during the next thirty years, and has hence acquired great historic 

 interest, being also the only remains of the larger extinct bison recognized 

 from this continent for nearly half a century. Mr. Peale presented a plas- 

 ter cast of this specimen to the Museum of Natural History of Paris at about 

 the time of the publication of his essay on the subject of fossil oxen, and it 

 was hence noticed almost simultaneously by M. Paujas-Saint-Fond,t who 

 believed it specifically identical with a younger specimen discovered on the 

 banks of the Ehine near Bonn, which he describes and figures in the same 



r 



paper, without, however, giving the species a distinctive name. $ Peale's 

 specimen was next noticed by Cuvier§ in 1808, who redescribed and figured 

 it from the cast sent by Mr. Peale to the Paris Museum. Cuvier regarded 

 it as not only identical with the fossil bison of Europe, but referred both to 

 the living aurochs (Bison honasiis)^ from which the fossil animal seemed to 







K 



1^ 



s 



otliers were subsequently made known by other writers from many other localities. In 1832 Hermann 

 von Meyer was able to give measurements of numerous skulls and a figure and description of the pelvis. 

 J. F. Brandt, in his Zoographische und Palaeontologische Beitrage, published in 1867, gave a list of the 

 localities at which its remains have been found, from which it appears to have been already met with in 

 nearly every country of Europe and in Siberia. ^ The most southerly point at which its remains have 

 been found is in Upper Italy, skulls having been obtained near Pavia, on .the Po. They have also been 

 found in France, Switzerland, the British Islands, in Holland, Belgium, and Germany, especially about 



Mannheim on the Bhine, as well as in Sweden, Poland, Hungary, European Russia, and Greece. Tliey 

 have also been found at several localities in Asiatic Russia. 



* Philosophical Magazine, Vol. XV, pp. 325-327, pL vi, 1803. 



t Ann. du Museum, Vol. H, p. 190, 1803. 



% It forms the "Premiere Espece " of his essay, and is placed under the descriptive heading, ''Boeuf fos- 

 sil a comes disposees presque horizontalement" etc. 



Ann. du Museum, Vol. XII, p. 382, pi. xxxiv, fig. 2. 



^ 



