264 PROF. J. C. EWART ON 



Catalogue of the Ungulata that in the true Oxen " the premaxillse 

 are large and always extend upwards between the maxillae and 

 nasals and consequently articulate with both these bones as in 

 Buhalus.'" Lydekker, in discussing the premaxillfe in the Bovidae, 

 points out that in Bos chinensis, a new species desciibed by Gray 

 in 1870 (L e. before the pxxblication of the Catalogue of the 

 Ungulates), "the premaxillse are small and do not extend upwards 

 to the nasals precisely as in Bibos"*. But while in Bos nania- 

 dicihs and in Bos chinensis the premaxillae may be always small, they 

 are not invariably small in the Bibovine group. In a Gaur skull 

 in the Royal Scottish Museum the premaxillse reach the nasals, 

 and Mr. Pocock informs me that, of four Gaur skulls he examined 



Text-%. 77. 



Skull of polled Ne^vstead Ox with forked premaxilte, large orbits, deeply notched 

 occiput, uneven forehead ending in a rounded mesial prominence. Skulls of 

 this type with horns are sometimes said to belong to JBos frontosus Nilsson. 



in the British Museum, one has the premaxillae in contact with 

 the nasals, while in another skull they are separated by a long 

 interval from the nasals. Of all Lydekker's statements about the 

 premaxillse, the one which bears most on the present enquiry is to 

 the effect that a small premaxilla is " never found in any European 

 Ox " t. If the premaxilla is small in Bos oiamadicus, but never 

 small in European cattle, the presumption is that European cattle 

 are not descended from Bos namadicus, biit from Bos j^riinigenms, 

 in which the premaxillse in all the skulls examined reach the 

 nasals. 



In one of theNewstead skulls, which probably belongs to an im- 

 ported Ox, as large as a modern Aberdeen- Angus steer, the total 

 length of the premaxilla is only 118 mm. — 47mm. shorter than the 



* Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India, series x. vol. i. p. 19. 

 f Oj). cit. p. 3. 



