222 
GEOGRAPHICAL ZOOLOGY. 
[PART IV. 
are briefly and accurately defined as, “ hollow-horned ruminants 
and, although they present wide differences in external form, 
they grade so insensibly into each other, that no satisfactory 
definition of the smaller family groups Can be found. As 
a whole they are almost confined to the great Old World 
continent, only a few forms extending along the highlands and 
prairies of the Nearctic region ; while one peculiar type is found in 
Celebes, an island which is almost intermediate between the 
Oriental and Australian regions. In each of the Old World 
regions there are found a characteristic set of types. Antelopes 
prevail in the Ethiopian region ; sheep and goats in the Palse- 
arctic ; while the oxen are perhaps best developed in the Oriental 
region. 
Sir Victor Brooke, who has paid special attention to this 
family, divides them into 13 sub-families, and 1 here adopt the 
arrangement of the genera and species which he has been so 
good as to communicate to me in MSS. 
Sub-family I. Bovina; (6 genera, 13 species). This group is 
one of the best marked in the family. It comprises the Oxen 
and Buffaloes with their allies, and has a distribution very 
nearly the same as that of the entire family. The genera are as 
follows : Bos (1 sp.), now represented by our domestic cattle, the 
descendants of the Bos primigenius, which ranged over a large 
part of Central Europe in the time of the Romans. The Chii- 
lingham wild cattle are supposed to be the nearest approach to 
the original species. Bison (2 sp.), one still wild in Poland and 
the Caucasus; the other in North America, ranging over the 
prairies west of the Mississippi, and on the eastern slopes of the 
Piocky Mountains (Plate XIX., vol. ii., p. 129). Bibos (3 sp.), 
the Indian wild cattle, ranging over a large part of the Oriental 
region, from Southern India to Assam, Burmah, the Malay 
Peninsula, Borneo, and Java. Poephagus (1 sp.), the yak, con- 
fined to the high plains of Western Thibet. Bubalns (5 sp.), the 
buffaloes, of which three species are African, ranging over all the 
continental parts of the Ethiopian region ; one Northern and 
Central Indian ; and the domesticated animal in South Europe 
and North Africa. Anoa (1 sp.), the small wild cow of Celebes, 
