THE URUS. 305 



Polish rebellion they fell to 874. Since 1863 no numbers 

 have been given. 



According to Kiitimeyer, than whom it is impossible to 

 cite a greater authority on such a question, our ancient bison 

 (B. priscus) was specifically identical with the existing Ameri- 

 can bison. Every stage, however, between the fossil form and 

 the existing European aurochs can be traced, so that it is 

 impossible to separate the two, an opinion in which Brandt 

 also coincides. It would appear, moreover, that the American 

 form of bison is more archaic than that of Europe. 



Allen regards the gigantic Bos latifrons, which had immense 

 horns spreading from 10 to 12 feet, as the parent form, passing- 

 through B. priscus into the present European, and through 

 B. bonasus into the American bison.* We have here, there- 

 fore, a clear case, in which two now distinct species are 

 connected by the evidence of fossil remains. 



The Urus, or Bos primigenius, did not extend its range to 

 America, nor, so far as I am aware, have its remains yet 

 been met with in North-eastern Asia. They occur, however, 

 throughout Europe in England, Scotland, Denmark, and the 

 south of Sweden, in France and Germany. Across the Alps 

 and Pyrenees, it occurs in Italy and Spain, and even, accord- 

 ing to M. Gervais, in Northern Africa. In the museum at 

 Lund is a skeleton belonging to this species, in which one 

 of the vertebrae still shows traces of a wound, made, in the 

 opinion of Professor Nilsson, by a flint arrow. Bones of this 

 species have also been met with in ancient tumuli, as well as 

 in the lake-habitations, and in the Kjokkenmoddings. 



Caesar particularly mentions the urus as occurring in the 

 Hercynian forest ; it is alluded to in the Niebelungen Lied, 

 and, according to Herberstein, it existed in Germany down 

 to the sixteenth century. In England, wild bulls are men- 

 tioned by Fitz-Stephen, in his Life of Becket, as occurring 



* The American Bisons, p. 35. 

 X 



