BOS PRIMIGENIUS. 501 



cattle of North America : there, on the contrary, the Bison 

 is fast disappearing before the advance of the agricultural 

 settlers, just as the Aurochs, and its contemporary the 

 Urus, have given way before a similar progress in Europe. 

 With regard to the great Urus, I believe that this progress 

 has caused its utter extirpation, and that our knowledge 

 of it is now limited to deductions from its fossil or semi- 

 fossil remains. 



The discovery of the skull and horn-cores of this species, 

 the Bos primigenius of Bojanus, in the alluvial beds of 

 rivers, in sub -turbary lacustrine marls, and in the newer 

 tertiary deposits of this country, demonstrates its claim 

 to rank with the British Fossil Mammalia, and at the 

 same time determines its equal antiquity with the Aurochs. 



The characters of the Bos primigenius^ as contrasted 

 with the Bison prisons, may be advantageously studied in 

 the magnificent specimen of an entire skull (fig. 208) from 

 near Athol, Perthshire, now in the British Museum. The 

 concave forehead with its slight median longitudinal ridge ; 

 the origin of the horns at the extremities of the sharp ridge 

 which divides the frontal from the occipital regions ; the 

 acute angle, at which these two surfaces of the cranium 

 meet to form the above ridge (fig. 210), all identify this 

 specimen with the Bos primigenius described by Cuvier,* 

 Bojanus, -f- and Fremery4 The cores of the horns bend 

 at first slightly backward and upward, then downward 

 and forward, and finally inward and upward, describing a 

 graceful double curvature : they are tuberculate at the 

 base, moderately impressed by longitudinal grooves, and 

 irregularly perforated. The skull is one yard in length and 

 the span of the horn- cores is three feet six inches ; but 



* ' Ossem. Foss.' iv. p. 1 50. -f- ' Nova Acta Acad. Nat. Cur.' xiii. pt. 2. 

 $ N. Verb. Koninkl.-Nederlaudsch Instituut, Derde Deel,' 1831. 



