ANIMALS EXTINCT IN THE HISTORIC PERIOD. 333 



Judging from that circumstance, naturalists are inclined to think that 

 the great-horned elk must have long survived the extinction of the 

 great pachyderms. Of late years bones of this species have been found 

 in such quantities as to allow the construction of entire skeletons. 



If the existence of the Irish elk is too much a thing of the past to 

 have received historic mention, the case is otherwise with tlie great 

 wild-ox of Europe [Bos primigenius of naturalists), an animal whose 

 size surpassed by a third that of our domestic oxen. This ruminant 

 has left abundant remains in the bottoms of water-courses, in alluvials, 

 peat-bogs, and caves. Like the bison which still survives, it inhabited 

 the forests of Central Europe less than 1,000 years ago. The fact 

 is proved by the writings of old authors. Caesar was not acquainted 

 with the bison, but he describes with vivid touches the wild-oxen of 

 the Hercynian forest, which he calls by the name of the urus. " They 

 have," says the Roman conqueror, " a stature little below that of ele- 

 phants ; in appearance, color, and form, they are like bulls. Of great 

 swiftness and extremely powerful, they spare neither men nor beasts 

 when seen. They are taken in trenches skillfully prepared. The 

 youths fit themselves to endure fatigue by the practice of hunting 

 these animals. Those who kill many of them display their horns pub- 

 licly in proof, and receive great applause. The urus can neither be 

 tamed nor accustomed to the sight of man, even though taken very 

 young. The horns of these animals differ much from those of our 

 oxen, in size, shape, and appearance. They are much sought after 

 by the natives, who decorate the edges with a silver circlet, and use 

 them for goblets at great feasts." 



The two bovine species of ancient Europe are plainly designated in 

 Seneca's verses : wild-oxen, with great horns, and bisons, with shaggy 

 backs. Pliny makes the same distinction between the wild-oxen of 

 Germany, bisons having a mane, and the urus remarkable for strength 

 and swiftness, to which the name of huhalus is commonly wrongly 

 given. That name really belongs to the buffalo [Bos huhalus), an ani- 

 mal native to Asia, and long ago well known to the Greeks; but it is 

 generally used in the middle ages to denote the ktus of Cjesar. The 

 species had not disappeared from the forests of the Vosges and Ar- 

 dennes during the first centuries of the French monarchy, for Gregory 

 of Tours relates that, by order of King Gontran, a chamberlain, his 

 nephew, and a forest-keeper, were put to death, for having killed a 

 " bubal " in a royal forest situated in the Vosges. Besides, Venun- 

 tius Fortunatus, the poet, bishop of Poitiers in 599, mentions in his 

 verses the bubal among the animals hunted in Ardennes and the Yos- 

 ges by Gogoor, the first mayor of the palace of Austrasia, mentioned 

 in history. The existence together in the Central European forests of 

 the two ruminants mentioned by Latin authors is once more attested 

 by a passage in the famous poem of the " Nibelungen." It is the descrip- 

 tion of a magnificent hunt ; the Burgunds dwell on the banks of the 



