﻿xxvi INTRODUCTION. 



probability the small Scottish and Welsh cattle are descendants of the former. If these 

 views be correct, and we accept, as we are bound to do, interbreeding as a test of species, 

 then both the urus and the short-horn belong to the same species, because their 

 descendants breed freely together. Since, however, there is a great and persistent 

 contrast between the size and form of the two in Pleistocene and Postpleistocene times, 

 not only in England but throughout Germany, Prance, and Switzerland, we think that 

 in classification they more conveniently fall under the head of closely allied species than 

 of varieties. The views, moreover, of their being the ancestors of our present varieties of 

 cattle may possibly turn out to be false in after years. 



The evidence for the existence of Bos longifrons in Pleistocene times appears to us to 

 be of such a nature as not to warrant the insertion of the animal in the list of species. 



Genus Ovibos. Species Ovibos moschatus, Blainv. — One of the more curious of the 

 North American herbivores is the Ovibos moschatus, or musk-sheep, generally from its 

 size called the musk-ox. 1 Its affinities, as M. Lartet 3 and M. de Blainville 3 have shown, 

 are all with the Ovidee and Capridtz. Its former existence in the West of England is 

 proved by portions of two skulls found in the gravels of the Avon, near the Somerset and 

 Wilts border. Messrs, Lubbock and Kingsley have also found it in the river-deposit near 

 Maidenhead, on the banks of the Thames. 4 A fragment of a cranium and a portion of a 

 pelvis of this animal have also been found at Green Street Green, in Kent, and are pre- 

 served in the British Museum. It has not as yet been found in any of the British 

 bone-caves. 



Genus Capra. Species Copra hircus, Gmelin. — The discovery of the skull, figured 

 by Professor Owen, and lower jaw of Capra Mrcus on the Walton shore, is by no means con- 

 clusive of the contemporaneity of the genus with the extinct mammalia, the remains of 

 which are washed up on the same shore. The case indeed, cited by Professor Owen, 

 stands alone, no instance being on record of the occurrence of the genus in any of the 

 numerous Pleistocene deposits on the Continent. The remains found by Mr. Brown, of 

 Stanway, on the Walton coast, may have been washed up from some other and later 

 formation, as in the instance cited in the note upon Bos longifrons of the association of 

 remains on the Selsea shore. Further evidence is still required to prove that any of 

 the Ovidee or Capridce coexisted with the mammoth, rhinoceros, and other Pleistocene 

 mammalia. 



Genus Alces. Species Alees malchis, Gray. — We have already mentioned the charac- 

 teristic broad palmate d antler of the true elk of Norway, or moose-deer of the Canadians, 

 found in the neighbourhood of Newcastle, in our list of Prehistoric mammalia ; the proof 

 that the same species inhabited South Wales in Pleistocene times is furnished by the lower 



1 Bubalus moschatus, Owen. 'Quart. Geo]. Journ.,' 1856. 



2 ' Comptes ifcendus/ lviii, 26. 



3 ' Bull. Soc. Philom.,' 1816, p. 81. 



4 'Quart. Geo!. Journ., 5 1856. 



