4 THE AMERICAN BISONS. 



found in the bed of a small creek about a dozen miles north of Big-bone 

 Lick, Kentucky, and consisted of a part of a cranium with a considerable 

 portion of one horn-core attached. This specimen was presented by Samuel 

 Brown of Kentucky to the American Philosophical Society, and was fust 

 described anil figured by Rembrandt Peale, in a paper entitled " Account 

 of Some Remains of a Species of gigantic Oxen found in America and other 

 parts of the World."* This specimen Peale believed indicated a species of 

 the ox tribe of gigantic proportions whose horns must have had a spread of 

 nearly twelve feet, — a conjecture that subsequent discoveries have proved 

 well founded. 



This fragment, now deposited in the Museum of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences of Philadelphia, was repeatedly figured and described by different 

 authors during the next thirty years, and has hence acquired great historic 

 interest, being also the only remains of the larger extinct bison recognized 

 from this continent for nearly half a century. Mr. Peale presented a plas- 

 ter cast of this specimen to the Museum of Natural History of Paris at about 

 the time of the publication of his essay on the subject of fossil oxen, and it 

 was hence noticed almost simultaneously by M. Faujas-Saint-Fund.t who 

 believed it specifically identical with a younger specimen discovered on the 

 banks of the Rhine near Bonn, which lie describes and figures in the same 

 paper, without, however, giving the species a distinctive name. I Peale's 

 specimen was next noticed by Cuvier§ in 1S0S, who redescribed and figured 

 it from the cast sent by Mr. Peale to the Paris Museum. Cuvier regarded 

 it as not only identical with the fossil bison of Europe, but referred both to 

 the living aurochs | Bison bonasus), from which the fossil animal seemed to 



others were subsequently made known by other writers from many other localities. In 1833 Hermann 

 von Meyer was able to give measurements of numerous skulls and a figure and description of the pelvis. 

 J I I'.i .mlt. iii lii- Zoogrnphische und Palaeontologische Beitrage, published in 1867, gave a li>t of the 

 localities at which it- remains have been found, from which it appears t>> have been already nut with in 

 very country <>f Europe and in Siberia. The moat southerly poinl at which it* remains have 



been (band i- in Upper Italy. -knll< having I n obtained mar Pavia, <>n the IV Thej have also been 



found in France, Switzerland, the British Islands, in Holland, Belgium, and Germany, especially about 

 Mannheim on tin- Rhine, as well as in Sweden, Poland, Hungary, European Russia, ami Greece. They 

 have also been found at several localities in Asiatic I!' 

 • Philosophical Magazine, Vol, XV. pp. 836 ■'■-':. pi. \\. 1803. 

 f Ann. .In Museum, Vol. II. p I 



{ It forms tl md is placed under the descriptive heading, "£ 



'alt m< ni," etc. 

 ■ In M urn. \ ..I. XII. p. 882, pL uutii 



