358 BRITISH MAMMALS 



we see in the Jersey cow — a race which is actually descended 

 through many divagations from this African stock. Early types 

 of domesticated 'Bos indicus that reached Egypt do not seem to 

 have had much of a hump, though there was a tendency to 

 height at the withers. In their earliest form they are more 

 archaic, perhaps, in appearance than the modern domestic cattle 

 of India, and are represented at the present day by the Gala ox, 

 a breed possessing enormous horns, in shape and turn very like 

 those of the yak in some examples, or of the Bibovine group in 

 others. The Gala ox was the earliest breed of domestic cattle 

 in Africa, and is met with to-day in its purest type in 

 Abyssinia, Galaland, and the western part of the Uganda Pro- 

 tectorate. It was succeeded by a more modern Indian type 

 equivalent to the Indian zebu, which apparently proved more 

 suited to the climate of Tropical Africa. From Egypt, and 

 perhaps from India, strains of this Indian type of ox permeated 

 our European domestic cattle. In Europe (allowing for this 

 slight Oriental mixture) the stocks of domestic cattle are de- 

 scended from the two forms of "Bos taurus — namely, from the 

 shaggy, black or red aurochs, and from the smooth, mouse- 

 coloured, Mauritanian ox. Perhaps, as already remarked, in the 

 east of Europe, and permeating westwards, there may have been 

 a strain of Indian blood. 



The aurochs, or northern form of Bos taurus, was probably a 

 larger animal than the Mauritanian ox.^ In its finest development 

 in Britain and Germany it was a splendid monster, about twice 

 the size of a big bull of the domestic breed. The head was long, 

 especially in the facial portion, the nose being much longer than 

 in Bos indicus, or perhaps than in the Mauritanian variety of Bos 



1 In this form the head was shorter ; the horn cores did not curve so 

 much forward, but more downwards (a trait which often persists and comes 

 out in the cross-strains of European breeds), and the Umbs were longer and 

 more slender. The Mauritanian ox may, on the whole, be taken to be the 

 chief source from which the breeds of Spanish, early Egyptian, Syrian, and 

 perhaps Hungarian cattle were derived. This breed may also have been 

 introduced at an early date into Southern Italy, though it is probable that 

 most of the Roman cattle were derived from the northern aurochs. 



