ROOM IV. FOSSIL BOVIDJE BISON PRISCUS. 389 



Elephant, Rhinoceros, Hippopotamus, Horse, Deer, Ox, Irish 

 Elk, Bear, Hyaena, Vole, &c. 



From Grays and Ilford in Essex, the fossil bones of rumi- 

 nants in Wall-case F were chiefly obtained. 



The specimens in this Case are too miscellaneous to .admit 

 of particular description, until they are properly arranged and 

 numbered. They comprise skulls, jaws with teeth, and bones 

 of the extremities, of Deer, Elk, Ox, &c. The only fossils that 

 can be conveniently selected for description, are the crania 

 and horns of the three species of Bos or Ox, whose remains are 

 very generally distributed throughout the post-pliocene or 

 diluvial deposits of Europe ; and also in the bone-breccia, 

 and in the ossiferous caverns. 



FOSSIL BOVID^;, OR OXEN. Distinguished from other rumi- 

 nants by their strong and massy head, armed with horns 

 having a cavernous core or pith, and extending laterally from 

 the skull, the crania of the Bovidse are easily recognised. 

 Their molar teeth, the crowns of which, as in the other rumi- 

 nants, have double crescents, the convexity in the upper 

 molars being internal, and in the lower external, are readily 

 distinguished from those of the Elk and Deer, with which 

 they are often intermingled, by the presence of a little column 

 or pillar between the ridges of the crown, and which is of suffi- 

 cient length to be worn down in common with the crescents, 

 by mastication. 



There are the remains of three well-known fossil species of 

 Ox in this collection ; and it is an interesting fact, that one 

 of the species still exists, and that the others in all proba- 

 bility have died out, within the last thousand, or fifteen 

 hundred years. 



M. Pictet remarks, that the Aurochs are the only bovine 

 animals ancient tradition assigns to Europe, and that their 

 fossil remains prove they lived from a very remote antiquity ; 

 there is also another species, which is apparently the ancestor 

 of our domestic Ox. Bones of this family are found in the 

 upper tertiary or pliocene deposits of Montpellier, and Puy- 

 de-D6me ; and in the eocene of the Sewalik or Sub-Hima- 

 layan hills. 



BISON PRISCUS; OR FOSSIL AUROCH. Wall-case F, and 

 Wall-case in Room V. Tn the Case before us there are 

 several horn-cores, and on the top of the Case in Room V. a 



