OX, a bovine animal; that is, a ruminant
of the sub-family Bovinæ, which includes the
typical species of the large family ../Bovidæ/
(q.v.); more specifically, an adult castrated
male of some domesticated breed. An uncastrated
adult male is a “bull,” a female a “cow,” a young individual of either sex a “calf,” a yearling female a “heifer,” a young castrated male a “steer” and a bull castrated when mature a “stag.” The herd collectively is spoken of as “oxen” or “cattle.” Hence, by extension, all
the Bovinæ are spoken of as cattle, wild or
tame, a list of which follows. The group is
characterized by its large size and bulky form
and by various minor characteristics, of which
the foremost is the roundness, smoothness, horizontal up-curving growth and comparative shortness of the horns. Like the other sections of the family, antelopes, sheep, goats, etc., oxen are easily recognized but rather difficult to define technically. The history of the group begins, so far as known, in the Lower Pliocene (Siwalik) formations of India. The oxen apparently originated in that part of the world and reached Europe and North America in the time represented by the Upper Pliocene rocks. In some of the earlier species the females seem to have been hornless; but the type quickly assumed its proper form and some of those fossil in the Siwalki beds are closely related to our modern domesticated cattle. Europe possessed in the Pleistocene, or period just preceding the Glacial Period, a widespread, gigantic long-horned species named Bos primigenius and another species (B. brachycerus) with much shorter horns. Both seem to have survived the Glacial Period in sufficient strength to reoccupy the continent after the recession of the ice; and they constituted the great forest oxen, which Cæsar found in his campaigns in Gaul and Germany and to which, not distinguishing them, he gave the general name urus. Some survived as late, at least, as the reign of Charlemagne, and from them were derived, no doubt, the modern domesticated races of the Western World, possibly with some small and later admixture of native Eastern species. These cattle were tall, strong and seem to have differed mainly in the comparative length and shape of the horns; and there seems no doubt that a remnant of Bos primigenius, nearly, or, as some believe, quite pure, exists in the white cattle preserved in the Chillingham estates in the north of England (see ); it is also regarded as certain that the Holstein breed is a direct descendant of this species. The other (short-horned) species has long been extinct, but was apparently the progenitor of the great body of European domestic cattle, whence have been derived the herds of America, South Africa, Australia and, in fact, all the world except the Orient.
The domestication of cattle began in
prehistoric times; and some Asiatic species now
extinct may have supplied the stock represented
as in the service of the civilized nations of
ancient Persia, asia Minor, Syria and Egypt
by the early carvings and paintings which have
come down to us, but they may have been
derived from one or both of the species above
mentioned. They were carried to Carthage and
westward and to southern Europe when the
civilizations of Greece and the Italian Peninsula
arose and some were no doubt gradually taken
by Roman settlers into western Europe as fast
as it was subjugated, where they would be
crossed with the larger, hardier short-horned
local races of Gaul. Apparently the native cattle
of the British Isles were of the long-horned
(B. primigenius) stock only; but when what
now is England was conquered and colonized
by the Romans and later by the Saxons, Normans, etc., the better short-horned cattle which they brought with them were substituted first in