352 



Prof. Nilsson on the extinct and existing 



Description. — As far as we yet know, this is the smallest of 

 all the Ox tribe which lived in a wild state in our portion of the 

 globe. To judge from the skeleton, it was 5 feet 4 inches long 

 from the nape to the end of the rump bone, the head about 1 

 foot 4 inches, so that the whole length must have been 6 feet 8 

 inches. From the slender make of its bones, its body must 

 rather have resembled a deer than our common tame ox ; its legs 

 at the extremities are certainly somewhat shorter and also thinner 

 than those of a crown-deer (full- antler' d red-deer). The skull is 

 long and narrow, even more so than that of the deer ; the fore- 

 head upwards (over the eyes) flattened, with an edge going along 

 the frontal seam, which is most prominent upwards, and ends 

 with a rounded indenting backwards ; between the eyes is a more 

 or less considerable depression, above which there is often a 

 rising, and beneath which lies the incision for the nasal bones, 

 which go right up to the line, drawn between the lower borders 

 of the orbits. [Thus the frontal bones are not longer in this 

 species than they are in the Urns or Taurus.'] The horn- 

 cores small, cylindrical, short, curved only in one direction 

 forwards, sometimes, though seldom, downwards in the plane 

 of the forehead ; the nasal bones in front two-pointed, with a 

 deep small intermediate cavity ; the lacrymal bones flat, broadest 

 in the middle, narrower in the orbital and nasal parts : there 

 is always a rhombal opening between the frontal, nasal, and 

 lacrymal bones. The form of the temporal cavity behind 

 transverse-obtuse, before oblique-pointed; its hinder part (to 

 the angle above the joint of the under jaws) only one-fourth 

 broader than the fore-part. N. B. Herein it resembles the tame 

 Ox, but diff'ers visibly from the B, frontosus and Vrus. The 

 anterior palatine apertures lancet-shaped, at the back oblique 

 inward-pointed, the back ones lie between the palate bones ; 

 the nape transverse, up- 

 wards with a vertical in- 

 denting, downwards with 

 a vertical edge over the 

 circular foramen of the 

 nape (fig. 7). The skull 

 of this species varies con- 

 siderably in size and even 

 something in form, ac- 

 cording to its age and sex. 

 I have in my possession 



the fragment of a fore- Bos longifrons. 



head with horn-cores of a very old individual which seems 

 to have been a bull; the distance between the horn-cores 

 upwards is 5 inches 3 lines, and the circumference of the horn- 



Fig. 7. 



