THE ANCESTRY OF DOMESTICATED CATTLE. 
By E. W. Morse, 
Specialist in Animal Husbandry, Office of Experiment Stations, U. S. Depart- 
ment of Agriculture. 
I. SOME PROBABLE ANCESTORS OF DOMESTICATED CATTLE. 
INTRODUCTORY. 
The origin of our domesticated cattle has been the special object 
of study of many investigators, but the results of their labors have 
been written largely in foreign languages and have been published 
in widely scattered periodicals. In this article an attempt is made 
briefly to review and correlate the progress made b}^ the many zool- 
ogists, paleontologists, anthropologists, and historians who have 
worked on this difficult problem, as the original publications are in- 
accessible except to those living in the vicinit}^ of large libraries. 
Many details which would be of interest to the zoologist have been 
omitted because it is presupposed that the majority of the readers 
of this article will be men interested in cattle breeding, Avho desire to 
obtain a general survey of what is known concerning the ancestry of 
European and American cattle but who are too preoccupied with 
other duties to read a mass of osteological- details that would be both 
interesting and necessary to the scientist who is making a special 
study of the evolution of species. For those who care to pursue the 
subject further, a bibliography of some of the more important con- 
tributions to the subject is appended. The reader should also bear 
in mind that many facts regarding the ancestry of cattle are still 
unknown. Hence, those who are in haste to have all questions set- 
tled once and for all will derive but little cheer from the following 
pages. Much work remains to be done before final conclusions can 
be reached, but there may be some who, like the author, wish to know 
of the progress which has already been made, and for such the pres- 
ent work has been prepared. 
By the term " cattle " we usually mean domesticated bovine ani- 
mals, principally of two species — Bos taurus^ European cattle, and 
Bos indicuss the humped cattle of India and Africa, commonly called 
1 The two papers comprising this article were delivered, in a somewhat abbreviated 
form, as lectures at the graduate school of agriculture at Ames, Iowa, in the summer of 
1910. The author desires to acknowledge his indebtedness to the writings of Lydekker, 
Riitimeycr, Werner, Nehring, Wilckens. Keller, and Diirst, in particular, and to many 
other authors, some of whom are referred to in the text. 
