EXISTING KINDS OF WILD CATTLE 215 
cattle are included in a single generic group, its 
designation will be Bos bonasus caucasiais. A fine 
bull of this race shot some years ago stood 5 feet 
II inches at the withers. A length of 18 and a 
girth of 16 inches are good dimensions for European 
bison horns. 
In regard to the name donasus, it appears that 
this was used by Aristotle to denote the wild ox 
of Pannonia, or Paeonia — the modern Austro-Hungary 
and some of the neighbouring States. Whether it 
really applies to the bison, as distinct from the 
aurochs, may perhaps be doubtful, more especially 
as the ancient Greeks employed the name dison for 
the former animal. 
In the foregoing account of the European bison it 
is mentioned that its fossil remains occur in the Lena 
valley of Siberia ; and it may be added that skulls and 
bones of more or less nearly allied extinct bison 
extend right across Siberia and also recur in the 
frozen cliffs bordering Kotzebue Sound on the 
eastern side of Bering Strait. Obviously, then, we 
are on the track followed thousands and thousands 
of years ago by bison — which, like all cattle, were 
originally an Old World type — in the migration 
by a land-bridge across Bering Strait from the 
Eastern to the Western Hemisphere, at a date when 
the severity of the climate was probably less intense 
than is the case at the present day. 
In upper Canada we enter the domain of the 
modern American bison, or buffalo, as it is so 
frequently called in its native country, which is 
the only living species of wild cattle to be found 
on the American continent. Most unfortunately, 
this species is now generally known in scientific 
