Species of Bovine Animals. 



6425 



in Switzerland, takes its name from this animal, and bears a bull's 

 head in its arras." 



The name " bison" is equally of Teutonic origin, and Cuvier thought 

 that " vvisent," &c, are derived from the German " bisam " (musk) ; 

 but Dr. Weissenborn suggests, far more plausibly, that "bisam" is 

 derived from the name of the animal in which the smell of musk forms 

 so striking a feature. This author, however, also suggests that the 

 name "bison" may still be of Greek origin, derived from the Greek 

 verb signifying " to cough ;" whence " bison," the coughing ox, as the 

 voice of this animal must have struck the Greeks as much as that of 

 the Bos grunniens did the travellers in Tibet ; and in this respect the 

 Indian humped bull resembles the bisons, its voice, however, being 

 even more like a cough than a grunt, while that of the cow is also as 

 unlike the low of the European cow as can well be. The latter ex- 

 planation of the word "bison" we take to be founded on a mere 

 coincidence. 



Professor Nilsson remarks of the urus, "This colossal species of ox, 

 to judge from the skeleton, resembles almost the tame ox in form and 

 the proportions of its body, but in its bulk is far larger. To judge from 

 the magnitude of the horn-cores, it had much larger horns, even larger 

 than the long-horned breed of cattle found in the Campania of Rome. 

 According to all the accounts the colour of this ox was black ; it had 

 white horns with long black points ; the hide was covered with hair, 

 like the tame ox, but it was shorter and smooth, with the exception of 

 the forehead, where it was long and curly.* 



" The only specimens which we now possess of this extinct wild ox, 

 are some skeletons dug up, of which two are at present preserved here, 

 at the Museum of the University of Lund, where are also preserved 

 about a dozen of skulls of earlier and later specimens. * * * 



" In the Museum of the Royal Academy are fragments of the cranium 



* Lengthened and curly hair on the forehead is, indeed, an especial feature of the 

 present group of taurines, as before remarked, and not only as compared with 

 the smooth-fronted humped cattle, in which hardly a tendency to lengthened hair upon 

 the forehead is commonly shown, but equally with the third or flat-horned group of 

 taurines, as the gaour, gayal, banteng, &c. True, Mr. Hodgson figures his Gouri 

 gau with a very curly forehead ('Journal of the Asiatic Society,' x. 470); but 

 he describes the hair there as merely " a little elongated and slightly waved or curled '' 

 (p. 464) ; and of several gaour-heads, with the skin on, that we happen to have seen, 

 not one presented anything like the curly front of an English bull, and in fact 

 the lengthening of the hair had to be looked for to be observed at all, and its waviness 

 still more so. The hair of the forehead is a little elongated also in the gayal 

 and banteng, but only noticeably so when specially examined. 



XVII. Q 



