I 



1855.] OWEN FOSSIL MUSK-BUFFALO. 129 



parallel*," from which line it roams in summer northwards to the 

 islands beyond Barrow's Strait, — is the slightly modified descendant 

 of the old bubaline companion of the Mammoth and the Tichorhine 

 Rhinoceros ; the Musk-Buffalo then enjoying a much wider range, 

 both in latitude and longitude, over lands that now form three divi- 

 sions or continents of the northern hemisphere of the globe. There 

 appears to have been no degeneration in general bulk in the existing 

 Musk-buffaloes, and the close wool and coarser hair which clothe them 

 were doubtless the defensive covering of the pleistocene individuals, 

 as of the co-existing Elephants and Rhinoceroses. 



I should wish to be understood, however, whilst offering this 

 interpretation of the facts and comparisons based on Messrs. Kings- 

 ley and Lubbock's British fossil, not to be pronouncing absolutely 

 as to the specific identity of the fossil and the recent Musk-buffalo. 

 I am submitting merely the conclusion which, in the actual state of 

 zoological philosophy, seems to me to be deducible from the pre- 

 mises at command. It is only since the pubhcation of the illustra- 

 tions of the "Zoology of the Herald," in 1852, that naturalists 

 were made acquainted with the forms and proportions of the skeleton 

 of the recent Musk-buffalo f. No entire skull of the pleistocene or 

 fossil species has yet been obtained ; the bones of the face are 

 unfortunately broken away in the specimen. No. 24,591, IB, in the 

 British Museum, from the beach in Eschscholtz Bay, which, from 

 the retention of the homy case of the horns. Dr. Buckland could 

 not consider as fossil J. Of the forms and proportions of the bones 

 of the extremities in the fossil Musk-buffalo we as yet know nothing. 

 I do not, however, deem it probable that the parts of the skeleton 

 less liable to variation than the horns vdll be found to manifest 

 a greater amount of modification than those parts have presented in 

 the specimens of recent and fossil skulls hitherto compared. And 

 the extent ^nd kind of variety observed in the horn-cores of the 

 recent and fossil Musk-buffalo by no means lend support to the 

 hypothesis that would derive all the forms of bovine animals from 

 one specific stock. For no influences have been yet observed so to 

 modify the horns of the Ox proper (Bos) as to diminish the interval 

 between them and the Bison's (Bison) ; the horns of the Oxen may 

 wholly disappear in certain breeds, but their place of origin, or 

 relative position to the frontal bone, never varies. Moreover, the 

 three leading types of Bovidce, — Bos^ Bisons and Bubalus, — were 

 coeval in geological time, and were represented in Europe, Britain 

 inclusive, by the Bos primigenius. Bison priscus, and Bubalus mos- 

 chatus seu Pallasii. 



In regard to the question of the extinction of some of these 

 bovine species and contemporary Herbivora ; although the argu- 

 ment for the fact of a diluvial cataclysm, at a recent date in geologi- 

 cal time, which Cuvier deduced from the discovery of the carcass of 

 an elephant preserved with its soft parts entire in frozen soil on the 



* Sir J. Richardson, loc. cit. p. 23. f Fossil Mammals, pp. 66-87, pi. ii. 



t See, however, the judicious remarks of Sir John Richardson on the conser- 

 vative property of frost and frozen soil in regard to this specimen. Op. cit. p. 22. 



