OWEN ON RUMINANT QUADRUPEDS. 467 
earth — all these and other similar facts have concurred in 
establishing different views of the nature and value of the 
Ruminant order from those entertained by Cuvier, and the 
majority of systematic naturalists up to 1840. Thus instead 
of viewing the Anoplotherium as a pachyderm, the speaker, 
having regard to the small size of its upper incisors and 
canines, to the retention of the individuality of its two chief 
metacarpal and metatarsal bones, and to the non-develop- 
ment of horns at any period of life, would regard it rather as 
resembling an overgrown embryo-ruminant — of a ruminant 
in which growth had proceeded with arrest of development. 
The ordinal characters of the Anoplotherium are those of the 
Artiodactyla. On the other hand, instead of viewing the 
horse as being next of kin to the camel, or as making the 
transition from the Pachyderms to the Ruminants, the 
speaker had been led, by its third trochanter, its astragalus, 
its simple stomach and enormous sacculated caecum, the 
palaeotherian type of the grinding surface of the molars, and 
the excessive number of the dorso-lumbar vertebrae, to the 
conviction of the essential affinities of the Equidce with other 
perissodactyles (odd-toed hoofed beasts). 
The primitive types of both odd-toed and even-toed Ungu- 
lates occur in the eocene tertiary deposits : the earliest forms 
of the ruminant modification of the Artiodactyla appear in the 
miocene strata. The fossil remains of the aboriginal cattle 
of Britain have been found in the newer pliocene strata, in 
drift-gravels, in brick-earth deposits, and in bone-caves. Two 
of these ancient cattle ( Bovidce ) were of gigantic size, with 
immense horns ; one was a true bison ( Bison priscus ), the 
other a true ox ( Bos primigenius) ; contemporary with these 
were a smaller species of short-horned ox {Bos longifrons ), 
and a buffalo, apparently identical in species with the Arctic 
musk- buffalo ( Bubalus , or Qvihos , moschatns). 
The small ox {Bos longifrons) is that which the aboriginal 
natives of Britain would be most likely to succeed in taming. 
They possessed domesticated cattle ( pecora ) when Caesar 
invaded Britain. The cattle of the mountain fastnesses to 
which the Celtic population retreated before the Romans, 
viz., the Welsh “runt 55 and Highland “kyloe, 55 most re- 
semble in size and cranial characters the pleistocene Bos 
longifrons . Prof. Owen therefore regards the Bos longifrons , 
and not the gigantic Bos primigenius , as the source of part of 
our domestic cattle. 
From the analogy of colonists of the present day he pro- 
ceeded to argue that the Romans would import their own 
tamed cattle to their colonial settlements in Britain. The 
