CATTLE, SHEEP, GOATS. 379 



bos. The African buffalo is thus far known only from the Qua- 

 ternary of that continent (Bubalus antiquus, from Setif, Algeria). 



The wild cattle (ghaurs) of India, including, according to some 

 authorities, the Thibetan yak * (Poephagagrunniens), and constitut- 

 ing the genus Bibos, range from Southern India through the Malay 

 Peninsula to Java and Borneo. The earliest representative of this 

 group appears to be the Etruscan bull (Bos or Bibos Etruscus), 

 from the Pliocene deposits of France and Italy. 



The bisons (genus Bison) are at present comprised in two spe- 

 cies, the American (B. Americanus), which until recently inhabited 

 the greater part of the continent of North America, but which is 

 now restricted to a few hundred individuals, and the European 

 (B. EuropiEus), also known as the aurochs, which up to the pe- 

 riod of the Roman Empire appears to have been sufficiently abun- 

 dant in South-Central Europe, but which is now limited to the 

 imperial preserves of Lithuania and the wilds of the Ural and Cau- 

 casus. Its immediate precursor was the Bison priscus, whose 

 remains are distributed throughout the Quaternary deposits of al- 

 most every country in Europe and of Siberia; they have also been 

 found at Escholtz Bay, Alaska. The Pliocene B. Sivalensis would 

 seem to be a closely allied form, and, according to Ratimeyer, 

 nearer to it than to the living American species, or to its Post- 

 Pliocene predecessors, the B. latifrons and B. antiquus. 



Of the taurine genus Bos, which comprises the domestic cattle, 

 several well-marked varieties are recognised, all of which are by 

 most authorities referred back in their descent to the urus (Bos 

 primigenius), which was abundant in Central Europe in the time 

 of the early Roman emperors, but is now wholly extinct. By 

 Wilckens, on the other hand, it is claimed that at least some of the 

 breeds of cattle are the descendants of the European bison. 



The sheep and goats constitute an almost exclusively Old World 

 group of hollow-horned ruminants, of which there are but two in- 

 digenous representatives in the Western Hemisphere (North Amer- 

 ica). One of these is the Rocky Mountain sheep (Ovis montana), 

 which is very closely related to the argali of East-Central Asia, 

 and the musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus), which inhabits the region of 

 Arctic America north of the sixtieth parallel of latitude, or there- 

 abouts, but whose fossil remains are met with as well in the 



* Przovalskl describes a soeond species of yak as P. mutus. 



