ANIMAL EEMAINS FOUND AT CTSSBURY. 411 



3. Fragment of tibia, proximal end, Bos primigenius. Thickness 

 of cylinder of bone, exclusive of spongy diploe, 15 millimeters. 



4. Fragment of femur, proximal end, Bos primigenius. Thick* 

 ness as above, 14 millimeters. 



5. Two fragments of frontal bone of Bos primigenius, with strik- 

 ingly glistening and dense-textured walls to frontal sinuses. 



6. Fragment of rib of Bos jorimigenius. Its extreme depth is 

 $3 millimeters, as against 45 millimeters in the Chillingham bull. 



7. Upper molar teeth, Bos primigenius. 



8. Part of lower jaw of wild boar, Sus scrofa v.ferus, with second 

 and third molars in situ, and the last just come into use. The 

 bright glazed appearance characteristic of the wild variety of Sus 

 scrofa is well marked on the outer, but eminently well on the inner, 

 surfaces of the wall of the jaw. 



Very many more bones than these were procured by Mr. Tyndall 

 from his pit at Cissbury. His lamented death has, I believe, 

 caused many of them to be irrecoverably lost. Those described 

 are all that I have access to. 



The presence of these wild animals in Mr. Tyndall's pit may be 

 explained by the usually mistranslated 1 words of Julius Caesar, 



1 For example, Canon Tristram, in his 'Natural History of the Bible,' 1867, p. 148, 

 translates them thus : ' The hunters are most careful to kill those which they take in 

 pitfalls ;' and the Rev. J. G. Wood, in his 'Bible Animals,' p. 128, renders them 

 thus : ' These, when trapped in pitfalls, the hunters diligently kill.' Very little care 

 or diligence would have been required for killing, though a very great deal would 

 have been required for keeping alive, a wild ox which fell into such a pit as Mr. 

 Tyndall's, thirty-nine feet deep. If the writers just quoted had recollected that in 

 times previous to the invention of pumps it was a very common thing for ' an ox or 

 an ass to fall into a pit,' not studiose, but casu aut forte fortund, they would have 

 seen that the word studiose should be taken with 'captos.' So common, indeed, in 

 those times were such accidents, that Maimonides has written at great length about 

 them in his treatise ' De Damnis,' a well-known work of great authority. Or if they 

 had read a few lines more of Caesar's in the same connexion, they would have come 

 upon the words ' Haec (cornua) studiose conquisita,' which might have suggested a 

 truer rendering. It is curious to note that Cuvier, 'Oss. Foss.,' iv. p. 113, 2nd ed., 

 omits the words in question altogether ; and Gervais, * Zoologie et Pateontologie 

 Francaise,' p. 131, 1859, who would have done well had he followed Cuvier in some 

 other matters, follows him in this implicitly. The really ■ learned ' member for the 

 City of Oxford, Sir Wm. Harcourt, drew my attention to the splendidly illustrated 

 edition of the ' Commentaries,' published by Jacob Tonson, in 171 2. On referring to 

 it I found M. Gervais' error anticipated, Caesar's description of Bos urus being 

 illustrated by a magnificent, however misplaced, picture of a— Bison. Nor do T 

 entirely agree with the translation given by Mr. Edward Lee (p. 13 of his charming 

 little book, 'Excavations at the Kesserloch/ by Conrad Merk; translated by John 



