1866.] DAWKINS — FOSSIL BRITISH OXEN. 393 



is no difference of specific value between them, those points of 

 difference noticed by Professors Riitimeyer and Nilsson proving to 

 be peculiar to the individual and not to the species, and therefore 

 useless for classificatorj purposes. At the same time, its size, 

 though inferior to that of the Italian or Abyssinian animal, was far 

 greater than that of any variety of Bos taurus, which coexisted 

 with it in the forests of Erance, Germany, or Britain, and affords a 

 ready means of identification ; while it is easily differentiated from 

 the smaller contemporary Bison by the double curvature of the horns, 

 their backward position close to the occipital crest, the concavity of 

 the frontal bone, and the acute angle that the occiput makes with the 

 frontal region. The quadrangular outline of the occipital region 

 and the larger size of the bones, the anterior dorsal vertebrae being 

 excepted, are also guides by which to recognize it. 



3. Synonyms. 



The synonymy of the Bos urus is in a state of very great con- 

 fusion, arising from the fact that the two words denoting two 

 distinct species, the Urox and the Aurochs, are derived from the 

 same Sanscrit root, ur, aur, or or, that signifies a forest or stony 

 waste. The root can be traced through many languages, and still 

 survives in the Greek opos (a mountain), the Norwegian ore, the 

 Islandic urd (the stony desert surrounding the base of the mountains), 

 and is preserved without change in the old German ur (a forest) and 

 in " Ur of the Chaldees." It appears also in the Ural Mountains, 

 and also in the canton of Uri, the crest of which is an ox-head. At 

 the annual election of magistrates in the latter place, my friend the 

 historian of ^ Federal Republics,' Mr. E. A. Preeman, tells me that two 

 gigantic horns with double curvature are borne in solemn procession 

 to this day. These probably are of considerable antiquity, and were 

 obtained from a gigantic Urus-buU* that fell a victim to the chase, 

 in which the German youth in Caesar's time prepared themselves for 

 the toils of war, obtaining almost as much honour from the possession 

 of horns of Urus slain by their own hands as from that of trophies won 

 in battle f. The root also occurs in the name applied to the gigantic 

 ox of the tableland of Central India — the Gaur (Bos gaurus). With 

 reference to this, Mr. W. A. Chatto observes, " The word Gau or 

 Ghoo, as it is sometimes spelt by European writers, appears to be 

 used both as a generic and specific term in Persia and Hindostan ; 

 and as it has the same meaning as the German word Kuh, and the 

 English Oow, it is highly probable that its origin is the same. As 

 the word ur in Hindostan appears to have the meaning of luild or 

 savage, the name Gaur or Gau-ur literally signifies wild cow J. 



* That the Urus's horns were used in the Bronze age, and possibly before, is 

 proved by Professor Nilsson's discovery of a bronze trampet made in the shape 

 of a horn of Urus, dug from a depth of 6-8 feet out of a turf-bog in Southern 

 Scania. " It is more than probable that the inhabitants of the south of Sweden 

 first used the horns of the IJrox for their war-horns, and at a later period made 

 themselves horns of bronze in the same form as the former." Ojp. cit. p. 267. 



t Cses. Bell. Gall. 



X Nat. Hist, of the Ox Tribe. By George Vasey. 8vo. London, 1857 : p. 103. 



2e2 



