34 THE DOMESTIC FOWL. 



by which the present Wild Boar can be distinguished specifi- 

 cally from that which was contemporary with the Mammoth. 

 All the species of European pliocene Bovidse came down to the 

 historical period, and the Aurochs and Musk-ox still exist; but 

 the one owes its preservation to special imperial protection, and 

 the other has been driven, like the Rein-deer, to high northern 

 latitudes. There is evidence that the great Bos-primigenius, 

 and the small Bos-longifrons, which date, by fossils, from the 

 time of the Mammoth, continued to exist in this island after it 

 became inhabited by Man. The small short-horned pliocene Ox 

 is most probably still preserved in the mountain varieties of 

 our domestic cattle. The great Urus seems never to have been 

 tamed;" note this : " but to have been finally extirpated in Scot- 

 land. Of the Cervine tribe, the Red-deer and the Roe-buck still 

 exist in the mountainous districts of the north ; but, like the 

 Aurochs in Lithuania, by grace of special protective laws." 

 British Fossil Mammals and Birds, Introduction, p. xxxii. 



But if our domestic Fowls were thus early called into ex- 

 istence, where are their fossil remains to be found ? The 

 probabilities are against our finding them at all. We can 

 hardly expect them in any oceanic deposit ; and " extremely 

 rare," says Professor Owen, " are the remains of birds in the 

 fresh-water deposits, or marine drift of the newer pliocene pe- 

 riod, which so abound in Mammalian fossils. The light bodies 

 of birds float long on the surface after death ; and for one bird 

 that becomes imbedded in the sediment at the bottom, perhaps 

 ninety-nine are devoured before decomposition has sufficiently 

 advanced to allow the skeleton to sink." Id. p. 557. It would 

 probably be in their supposed original Asiatic home that any 

 successful search would be made ; but we ought not to be dis- 

 appointed if none are discovered even there. Dr. Buckland, 

 in his Reliquiae Diluvianse, mentions twenty-two localities of the 

 remains of antediluvian animals, and in only three of them are 

 relics of birds found. 



