OVIBOS MOSCHATUS. 17 



to a separate species, Ovibos maximus, but the differences do not seem to me to be 

 of specific value. The observations of Captain Kellett, Dr. Goodrich, and Dr. Seeman 

 have settled the constitution of the chffs whence these remains were derived.^ According 

 to the latter they present the following section : 



3. Peat from two to five feet thick ; destitute of fossils. 



2. Clay, river gravel, loam, and sand, from two to twenty feet, containing trees 



and fossil bones, and exhaling an ammoniacal odour. 

 1. Ice from twenty to fifty feet thick. 



It is a very singular circumstance that this ancient fluviatile deposit should rest on 

 the sui'face of a hard crystalline mass of ice which is now gradually melting away. 



§ 3. Fossil Bemains in Germany. — In Germany the animal has been found in four 

 locahties. Dr. Baer, in his Inaugural Address in 1823 to the University of Konigsberg, 

 mentions the animal, under the name oi Bos Pallasii, as having been obtained at Neugar- 

 tenthor, in Prussia. In 1846 the discovery of a skull in the neighbourhood of Merseburg 

 was put on record by Dr. Giebel f and Sir Charles Lyell quotes, in his ' Antiquity of Man,' 

 a skull in the Museum of Berlin correctly named by Professor Quensted ^ as far back as 

 1836, which had been dug up out of drift in the Kreuzberg, in the southern suburbs of 

 that city. The associated Mammalia are the Horse, Mammoth, and Tichorhine Rhino- 

 ceros.* The foiu-th instance of its occurrence in Germany is offered by Professor Schmid 

 of the University of Jena, who describes in the ' Neues Jahrbuch,' for 1863, a portion 

 of a skull found in the preceding year in the ancient alluvium of the Saale. 



§ 4. Fossil Bemains in France. — A tooth found by PAbbe Laubert in 1859^ in the 

 gravel of the Oise at Viry-Noureuil, near Chauny, and determined by M. Lartet, was the 

 first indication of the existence of Ovibos in Prance ; it was associated with remains of 

 ElejjJias antiquus, Mammoth, Cave Hyaena, Bear, and Reindeer ; flint implements were 

 found in the same bed of gravel. A portion of the skull found in 1859 ^ in a gravel pit 

 at Precy, in the same valley, along with a mammoth tusk, and described by M. Lartet, 

 corroborates the truth of his determination. From the same pit a flint instrument of the 

 St. Acheul type was obtained in 1860, and presented by M. de Verneuil to the Greo- 

 logical Society of Prance. The position of the horncores on the frontals, their small size 

 and rounded section prove that the skull belonged to a female. In the figure appended to 

 M. Lartet's paper the position of the parieto-frontal sutm-e on the coronal sm'face is very 

 well shown. And lastly, in the year 1864, M. Lartet and Mr. Christy discovered bones 



1 'Zool. Herald,' p. 1—8. 2 Leonhard u. Bronn's 'Jahrbuch,' 184ti, p. 4G0. 



3 Ibid., 1836, p. 216. * Lyell, 'Antiq. Man.,' 1863, p 156, 



5 'Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. Lond.,' vol. xxi, p. 475. ^ Comptes Rendiis, 1864, Iviii, 26. 



