Species of Bovine Animals, 



6559 



very small species of buffalo, of the size of a middling sheep. They 

 are wild in small herds, in the mountains of Celebes, which are full of 

 caverns. They are taken with great difficulty; and even in confinement 

 are so fierce that Mr. Soten lost in one night fourteen stags [Rusa ? 



?], which were kept in the same paddock, whose bellies they 



ripped up." 



Tn an excellent treatise on the generic sub-division of the hollow- 

 horned ruminants, by R. N. Turner, jun., published in the ' Proceedings 

 of the Zoological Society ' for 1851, it is remarked that — " Although 

 Colonel C. H. Smith was deceived as to the affinities of the Anoa, 

 later as well as earlier naturalists have assigned it to its true place, 

 and a glance at the stuffed specimen in the British Museum leaves the 

 matter beyond a doubt. I have examined the skull in the Museum 

 of the Royal College of Surgeons, and cannot see that it has even a 

 title to generic distinction. Naturalists seem at all times to have been 

 prone to assign generic rank to whatever was mysterious or difficult 

 to classify, and I can in no other way account for this species being 

 made a genus." 



Mr. Turner does not carry the sub-division of the bovines beyond 

 Bison, Bos and Bubalus ; but he admits Ovibos, and remarks of it : — 

 " This animal, which derives its name from its general aspect being 

 intermediate to that of the ox and that of the sheep, has generally been 

 placed among the bovine forms. Taking the aggregate of its characters 

 it appears to me to be at least as nearly, if not more, allied to the 

 sheep, but should most properly stand alone." To us it appears to be 

 immediately connected with the bisons by the intervention of the 

 fossil genus Bootherium. Mr. Hodgson, on the contrary, would separate 

 the African buffaloes from the Indian ; admitting which separation, the 

 Anoa should be likewise so distinguished.* 



The Anoa has straight, flat, bubaline horns, continued back nearly 

 in a line with the forehead, as in the Cape or Abyssinian oryx, or as 

 in the eland; they are shorter than the head, smooth, and very sharp- 

 pointed, and are depressed below the plane of the visage; they scarcely 

 diverge in their exterior outline, but sharpen off from about the middle 



* Of the Budorcas taxicolor of Mr. Hodgson, Mr. Turner remarks that " a glance 

 at the representations of the skull indicates very plainly that it is closely allied to 

 Naeraorhedus [hi which we think he is altogether wrong in associating the goral with 

 the surrows], to which Mr. Hodgson admits certain resemblances, and that it has no 

 relationship with the gnus or the musk ox." This quite coincides with our own 

 opinion. 



