260 The Progress of Zoology. 



proportion as the horns grow large ; at the last period of his 

 life the weight of his head is so great that he is nnable to lift 

 it up, or at least for any space of time." Mr. Salt, who saw 

 these oxen in Abyssinia, denied that the size of the horns was 

 occasioned by disease ; but Mr. Vasey, in his Delineations of 

 the Ox Tribe, insists that Salt's own evidence is against him, 

 and he reproduces a figure from Salt to substantiate Bruce's 

 account of the animal being both " lank and emaciated." We 

 have copied the head and horns from Vasey's plate (Fig. 3), 

 which will give the reader an idea of the disproportion between 

 the horns and the head that carries them. This is usually con- 

 sidered to be a variety of Bos Taurus, but there are some 

 differences which Mr. Vasey considers sufficient to render the 

 identity doubtful. In the specimen of the Sanga, in the 

 museum of the College of Surgeons, which is not the largest 

 that has been seen, the horns measure 3 feet 10^ inches in 

 length round the outer curve ; the distance between the tips is 

 3 feet 4 inches, the circumference at the base 1 foot 3 inches ; 

 and the distance between the bases at the forehead, 3| inches. 

 The last measurement is certainly favourable to Bruce's state- 

 ment, for it implies a narrowness of the frontal plate quite out 

 of proportion to the enormous magnitude of the horns. 

 According to Livingstone, the Bakalahari, one of the oldest of 

 the Bechuana tribes, possessed cc enormous herds of the large- 

 horned cattle mentioned by Bruce, until they were driven into 

 the desert by a fresh migration of their own nation," and 

 their loss of them may be attributed to their occupation of an 

 almost rainless region unfitted for the support of herds of 

 cattle, rather than to any inherent weakness in the large-horned 

 race. The Hungarian ox, which has horns measuring 3 feet 4| 

 inches, with a distance between the tips of 5 feet 1 inch, though 

 known to be a variety of Bos Taurus, resembles the Sanga in the 

 narrowness of the head, which is so neatly and delicately formed 

 as to appear unfit to carry such enormous appendages. The 

 Arnee, a native of the higher parts of Hindostan, has horns of 

 still greater dimensions than either of the preceding examples 

 of the genus Bos. A pair in the British Museum measure in 

 length from tip to base 6 feet 6 inches and 6 feet 3 inches 

 respectively, but the animal is reported to measure usually 

 twelve, and sometimes fourteen feet from the ground to the 

 highest part of the back. To quit this subject Ave subjoin a 

 figure of the head of a four-horned sheep in the possession of 

 the writer, in which the horns are remarkably unsymmetrical 

 and largely developed, the result of imperfect castration. 

 (Fig. 4.) 



Whatever may be the ultimate effect of hybridizing and 

 domestication, society looks to zoologists for assistance in 



