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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 Palaj-
arctic ;
region.
while the oxen are perhaps best developed in the Oriental
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. BoviN.^ (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 Eomans. The Chil-
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
Rocky Mountains (Plate XIX., vol. ii., p. 129). Bihos (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. Poepliagus (1 sp.), the yak, con-
fined to the high plains of Western Thibet. Bubalus (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,