niAta cattle. 277 



an English friend, told me that as a boy in Uruguay (Depart- 

 ment of San Jose), about the year 1870, he well remembers a 

 little herd of seven or eight Niata cows with their accompanying- 

 bull. They belonged to a Uruguayan neighbour, were exceed- 

 ingly tame and (in those days of no fences) were always tres- 

 passing, it being his privilege and delight to chase them back 

 into their own territory. The prevalent colour seems to have 

 been dun, with black legs (resembling the Jersey ?). An im- 

 pressive characteristic was the bulldog-like habit of " sniffing " 

 whenever the muzzle was raised from the ground (a habit I also 

 had particularly noted). In 1880 there came one or two solitary 

 cows, accompanying bought troops of ordinary cattle ; these had 

 probably been thrown in by the seller for the drover's con- 

 sumption. Subsequently my informant lived thirty years in the 

 Argentine (on a central Buenos Ayrean estancia), but never again 

 met the quaint friends of his youth. 



[Note. — The skull of the old Niata cow shown in text-fig. 2 

 has been presented to the British Museum (Nat. Hist.) by 

 Mr. Gibson.— Editor, P. Z. S.] 



