OTHER DOMESTICATED CATTLE i8i 
and they suffice, in the opinion of Dr. Dlirst, to 
indicate the occurrence of the wild race of the species 
in Mesopotamia at these early epochs. There seems 
no reason for assigning them to an extinct species, 
more especially as there is evidence to show that the 
Indian elephant likewise ranged into the same country 
during the Babylonian epoch. 
But the evidence for the former occurrence of the 
buffalo in Mesopotamia does not by any means end 
with the aforesaid cylinders. For Aristotle, in his 
History of Animal s,rQ{Qrs to certain cattle then living 
in what is now the Russian province of Kokand, in 
which the horns were curved backwards over the 
shoulders. Such animals could scarcely be other 
than buffaloes — either wild or tame — and if they 
were living in Persia during Aristotle's time, 384-322 
B.C., and were truly wild, it would be certain that the 
species likewise existed in Mesopotamia in 5000 B.C. 
Dr. Dlirst further suggests that the Assyrian name 
7'im, which, as mentioned in an earlier chapter,^ 
properly refers to the aurochs, may likewise have 
been used in a double sense, so as to denote also the 
buffalo. For it is known that in the year 878 B.C. 
King Assurnassirpal went on a hunting expedition 
to the land of Suehi, in the Euphrates valley, where, 
in the course of a few days, he slew no less than fifty 
full-grown rim, and took back with him twenty others 
alive, x^nd the apparent occurrence of the rim in 
large herds accords much better with the habits of 
the modern buffalo than with what we know of those 
of the ancient aurochs. 
" On all these grounds," writes Dr. Durst, " I con- 
sider it certain that a wild buffalo inhabited Meso- 
^ Supra ^ p. 61. 
