Species of Bovine Animals. 



6417 



Another particular in which the humped and round-horned humpless 

 races agree, while differing from all the rest, is in the greater length of 

 tail, which, with its tuft, descends considerably below the hocks ; the 

 short-horned Italian race of buffalos alone approximating them in this 

 respect. 



At the present epoch, no cylindrical-horned humpless taurines are 

 known for certain in an aboriginally wild state, though immense herds 

 have gone wild in the pampas of South America, and there are many 

 in the Falkland Islands, which have been finely described by Darwin, 

 and more recently in the narrative of Sir James Ross's Antarctic Ex- 

 pedition. These are of Spanish descent, and therefore akin to our 

 British Devons. — (Vide Jacobs 'Travels in Spain,' p. 154). Wild 

 cattle of some sort, however, quite possibly aboriginal, inhabited the 

 British forests during the middle ages, and likewise the great forest 

 of the Ardennes,* and in the Vosgian mountains, as mentioned by 



* The latter, however, were perhaps bisons. Dr. Weissenboru (who so ably argues 

 for the identity of the urus and bison, despite the evidence afforded by sub-fossil 

 remains) quotes the work of a monk of St. Gallen, who describes a hunting party of 

 Carolus Magnus, which was held in honour of the Persian Ambassadors, not far from 

 Aachen (Aix la Chapelle), probably in the Ardennes, in order to kill " uri or bisons ;'' 

 and of one wounded by Carolus Magnus and killed by Isambardus, which he calls 

 "bison vel urus," mentions that its horns were of an enormous size (" immanissimis 

 cornibus in testimonium prolatis "), which should rather indicate the urus ; but 

 we have the testimony of Herberstein regarding a bison, " within whose horns three 

 stout men could sit." A peat-bog skull of the Bison priscus type, of the age of the 

 later uri so often met with, would serve alike to corroborate Herberstein's statement, 

 and to help to identify the Bison priscus with the modern bison — or, better, as regards 

 the latter, gradations of form in the intermediate period. It seems clear that 

 the ecclesiastic cited did not distinguish between the bison and urus, which may indi- 

 cate that the latter had already been long extirpated in his vicinity, and the name 

 only vaguely preserved at the time he wrote. Of the so-called "wild cattle" 

 preserved in certain British parks, the white colour is alone strong evidence of their 

 former domesticity. Any cattle preserved as they are would become similarly wild in 

 the course of a few generations. A recent writer describes those in Cadzow Park, 

 belonging to the Duke of Hamilton, to be " about the size of our modern bullocks, 

 but differing from them in their extraordinary breadth of chest and strength of fore- 

 arm. They are of a creamy white, the ears, muzzle, and tips of horns being- 

 jet black. The old bulls have a shaggy mane a few inches in length. They have the 

 range of an extensive park, the remains of an ancient oak-forest, through which they 

 roam unmolested ; they thus retain many of their normal habits and much of their 

 original ferocity. When a calf is born it is carefully concealed by its mother, and if 

 any one is so rash as to approach it the whole herd rush to the rescue, when most 

 people think it safest to retreat. The old bulls in particular are very savage. A few 

 years ago Mr. Minto, head-keeper to the Duke of Hamilton, while riding through 

 the park was charged by one ; his horse was thrown to the ground and severely gored 

 XVII. P 



