Guide to the great fame animals (Ungulata) in the Department of Zoology, British Museum (Natural History) : Illustrated by 53 text and other figures.

  • British Museum (Natural History). Department of Zoology.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Guide to the great fame animals (Ungulata) in the Department of Zoology, British Museum (Natural History) : Illustrated by 53 text and other figures. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    situated high up on the head, and may be either rounded or triangular, but never have the transverse ridges of those of the Sheep or the knobs of the Goats. The broad muzzle is moist and naked, and there are no glands below the eye. The upper molar teeth differ from those of Sheep and Goats by their nearly square section, and have an additional column on the inner side. Some members of the group inhabit open grassy plains, but others frequent forests, and the Yak is found in the highlands of Tibet. Except the Anoa, they live in herds, which may comprise thousands of individuals, and are headed by bulls. Some very old bulls may, however, become solitary. Their food consists either of leaves, twigs, and grasses, or various marsh-plants. Usually only one calf is produced at a birth. Typical Oxen Aurochs, or Urus—the old Wild Ox of Europe— is now completely extinct as a wild species, although BOS taurilS. most European domestic breeds may be regarded as its more or less modified descendants. The remains of this Ox (.Bos taurus primigenius) occur abundantly in the fens and river- gravels of Britain, and—as exemplified by the skull and limb-bones [North ^ • • T7 l] | exhibited—indicate an animal of enormous size and strength. In ±lai J Britain this original race appears to have become extinct by the time of Caesar—at least in the southern parts of the country ; but on the Continent it survived to a very much later date. In England it was succeeded by the so-called Celtic Shorthorn (Bos taurus longifrons), which appears to have been a domesticated breed. The half-wild white cattle of Chillingham and some other British Parks have been regarded as the direct wild descendants of the Aurochs, but they are really domesticated albino breeds nearly related to the black Pembroke cattle (of which a head is exhibited). The Pembroke breed appears to be very closely allied to the Aurochs, which is known to have been black, with a lighter stripe down the back. A mounted specimen of a bull of the white cattle of Chillingham Park, Northumberland, presented by the Earl of Tankerville, is exhibited; while the head of a cow and the skeleton of a bull are likewise shown. Of the white cattle formerly kept at Chartley Park, Staffordshire,—most of the remnant of which was transferred in 1905 to Woburn Abbey—the mounted head and the skull of a cow, presented by the Duke of Bedford,