102 ^Ti. U. T. Pocock 0)1 same 



iIk- latt--r into Europe and itssubsequent interbieeJing 

 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 Tacts susceptible of other interpretations. 



II. The Banteng-descent of the Zebus. 



Criticising this theory first of all from the ethnological, 

 and admittedly therefore from a purely theoretical, standpoint, 

 it ajtpears 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. 



Tin re are reasons for believing that the humped cattle have 

 been a domesticated type for a very long time, certainly for a 

 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 Rutimeyer's theory, sup- 

 ported by Keller and Lydekker, that the banteng was the 

 ancestor of the zebu be true, its domestication must be assigned 

 to a much earlier date to account for the acquisition of the 

 distinctive [leculiarities 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 fVom 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 domeslication of the banteng has been of comparatively 



* Tliis appears to be Prof. Ewart's opinion (P. Z. S. 1911, i. p. 281). 

 Ill concluding his study of the skulls ot lioman cattle obtained at New- 

 sti\id, he wrote : — " Hence it maj be said tliat up to at least the Bronze 

 Age the majoiity of the domestic cattle of Europe were the descendants 

 of Bos primit/enms — some being nearly pure descomiauts of the imported 

 ' Celtic ' shorthorn breed, wliile others were pure or nearly pure descen- 

 dants of the indigenous wild urus {Bos ianrus primigcnins).'" 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 inv. Ived in the ancestry. The 

 evidence which excludes other breeds of cattle from this genefilogy does 

 not appeal to me as at all convincing. 



