ROYAL IRISH ACADEMY. 
279 
According to the most authentic authorities, Cuvier, Herman von 
Meyer, and Owen, four great types of oxen existed in Europe in early 
times—first, the Bos prisons, or liras, the great Auroch which the 
Roman armies found in the primeval forests of Germany and Belgium, 
and of which a few specimens still remain in the imperial preserves of 
Lithuania—-the chief modern representative of which is the bison. It 
was a creature with long horns rising above the head, a narrow fore¬ 
head, high frontal crest, projecting orbits, and a warm shaggy coat. The 
stuffed specimens I have examined in the museums of Yienna and Frank¬ 
fort were of a reddish brown-colour, and of great size. The second is the 
Bos primigenus of Boganus, which was also found by the Romans among 
the fastnesses and entangled forests of uncultivated Europe—with long 
slightly curved horns, set on at right angles with the head, but turning 
forwards at the extremities, and spreading to a breadth of nearly five feet 
from tip to tip; and of which beast it is conjectured the present race of 
horned cattle in Europe spring. Some degenerate descendants still exist 
in Sicily; but the Cape buffalo affords the best specimens of the long-horned 
species. A third extinct ox, described and named Bos trochocerus by 
Meyer, had a very narrow head, and long cylindrical horn-cores rising 
high above the level of the back of the occiput, and then curving for¬ 
wards and inwards. All these three have been found in diluvial depo¬ 
sits—the last, however, only in Germany. The fourth, which is almost 
peculiar to Ireland, has been denominated Bos longifrons (the long- 
fronted or small fossil ox), somewhat of a misnomer, it must be confessed, 
because, properly speaking, it should be denominated Bos latifrons, 
from the exceeding breadth of forehead and face, in which particular it 
differs in an especial manner from either of the three former. It is the 
type of the present short-horn, and the first specimen recorded came from 
this country long before the present century. “A frontlet and horn-core 
of this species,” says Professor Owen, in his beautiful work upon British 
Fossil Mammals and Birds, “formed part of the original collection of 
John Hunter, in the manuscript catalogue of which collection it was re¬ 
corded as having been obtained from a bog in Ireland.” I had entered 
it in the catalogue of the Museum of the College of Surgeons in 1830, 
under the name of Bos brachyceros, on account of its peculiarly short 
horns; and, after the imposition of that name upon a living African spe¬ 
cies, to Bos longifrons, under which the remains of this interesting spe¬ 
cies or variety were described in my “ Report on British Fossil Mam¬ 
malia.” In 1839 Dr. Ball, our late Treasurer, brought the subject of 
the remains of oxen found in bogs in Ireland before the Academy; but 
the few lines which I find upon the subject in the “ Proceedings” have in 
no wise elucidated the matter or assisted my researches. The animal he 
described was evidently the small fossil ox of Hunter. He also in 1844 
noticed the circumstance in the third volume of the “ Transactions of the 
Geological Society of Dublin,” but does not say where or how the spe¬ 
cimens were found. 
It will be in the recollection of some of the senior members of the 
