6416 



Notice of the various 



As with the humped cattle, the living races of the humpless with 

 cylindrical horns have the latter thicker and shorter in the bull, longer 

 and more slender in the ox and cow ; but it does not appear that this 

 rule held with the more ancient of two races currently assigned to 

 Bos primogenius. This more ancient race, which was contempora- 

 neous with the long-horned form of bison (B. priscus), the Elephas 

 priscus, &c, had horns which were both longer and thicker, i.e. every 

 way larger in the bull than in the cow, and we -have measured a pair 

 (the largest of several examined), the bony cores of which were 3 feet 

 long and 19 inches round at base.* In this type the horns tend to 

 approximate towards their tips, — not so in the other. The skull too 

 is smaller, notwithstanding the huge magnitude of the horn-cores. In 

 the other, or less ancient of the two races, apparently, the remains of 

 which are found chiefly in peat-bogs, instead of the older clays and 

 gravel-drift which contain the bones of the former, the horns (as in our 

 modern cattle) were comparatively thick and short in the bull, longer 

 and more slender in the cow. — Vide Nilsson's figures of a bull-skull 

 in the ' Annals and Magazine of Natural History," 2nd series, vol. iv. 

 pp. 257, 259, and Professor Owen's figures of a cow-skull in his 

 6 History of British Fossil Mammals and Birds,' pp. 498, 507. This 

 race we take to be the true urus of Caesar and other Roman writers 

 (ure-ox, uhr-ox, aurochs, as variously written, which last has been 

 transferred in Germany to the bison, as in modern times it is applied 

 to the Cape buffalo by the Dutch colonists of South Africa), — a 

 gigantic animal, which lived down to comparatively modern times, and 

 of which Mr. Woods, as quoted by Professor Owen, cites the discovery 

 of a skull and horns in a tumulus of the Wiltshire downs, as "evidence 

 that a very large race of genuine taurine oxen originally existed in 

 this country (England), although most probably entirely destroyed 

 before the Invasion of Britain by Caesar, since they are not mentioned 

 as natives of Britain by him."f In all other bovines, the horns are 

 both longer and thicker in the male sex, — the only exception (in the 

 former respect) that occurs, being the Indian buffalo in some instances. 



* Another of the same linear dimensions, but eighteen inches in circumference at 

 base, is noticed in the 4 Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' vol. ii. p. 163 

 (1838). 



f It surely does not follow, that even great Caesar himself should know the animals 

 of the country by intuition ! Our countrymen were long enough in India before they 

 discovered the Gaour ! What, too, about the former tradition of the dun cow of Guy, 

 Earl of Warwick ? One of the oldest known sub-fossil skulls of the giant ox is, we 

 believe, still exhibited in Warwick Castle : and the tradition may have reference to it 

 and be purely imaginary. 



