10 THE OX AND ITS KINDRED 
Malay countries and the gaur of India, the bisons of 
Europe and America, the yak of Tibet, the buffaloes 
of India and Africa, and the anoa or dwarf buffalo of 
Celebes, and collectively constitute the subfamily 
Bovhice^ into a number of separate genera. Others, 
on the contrary, include the whole of them in the 
typical genus Bos, which is separable into subgeneric 
groups corresponding to the genera of naturalists 
who adopt the former arrangement. The latter and 
simpler plan is the one followed in the present volume. 
Oxen, in the wider sense of the term, or cattle, as 
they are perhaps better called, are members of the 
great order of Ungulata, or hoofed mammals, of 
which, next to the elephants, hippopotamuses, giraffes, 
camels, and rhinoceroses, they constitute some of the 
largest existing representatives, although a few are 
smaller. Ungulates take their name from the 
circumstances that the feet of the more typical 
members of the order are encased in solid hoofs ; 
although in a few cases, as in the elephants and 
rhinoceroses, these hoofs are replaced by large, flattened 
nails. In correlation with these hoofs or hoof-like 
nails, which do not admit of the fore-limbs being 
used as grasping organs, the fore-limbs themselves 
are so constructed that each is capable of movement 
in only a single plane, the feet having lost the power 
of supination possessed by the fore-paws of Carnivora 
and monkeys. This single character is practically 
sufficient to distinguish the Ungulata, which include 
its largest living terrestrial representatives, from all 
other members of the mammalian class. 
Exclusive of elephants and the small Syrian and 
African mammals known as hyraxes, which are in 
many respects what naturalists call generalised types, 
