334 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Rhine, and their Ling, Gunther, leads Siegfripdthe Strong, the hero of 

 the poem, into the forest of Odenwald, where dwell bears, elks, wild- 

 boars, stags, and oxen. Siegfried distinguishes himself among all 

 his comrades by killing a great number of wild beasts, and among 

 others a bison and four urus. According to Eckhart, the learned 

 Benedictine, the great ox or bubal was still existing in the Ilyrcanian 

 forest in Charlemagne's time, and certainly in some parts of Helvetia, 

 A proof of the latter point is given by the catalogue of meats in use 

 among the good monks of Saint-Gall ; the urus, or bubal, and the bison 

 both appear on the list. 



Thus it is impossible to doubt that two wild bovine species were 

 living in Europe till the eleventh century ; but, dating from that epoch, 

 nothing more is said of the great-horned ox, the urus of Caesar, the 

 bubal of common people. The utter silence of all writers shows that 

 tlie destruction of the species was complete. One of the finest animals 

 in the world had become extinct. 



Very soon after naturalists had begun to search for the remains of 

 animals belonging to ancient geological periods, they dug up bones of 

 a huge ox, with remains of the core of horns of surprising size. Whole 

 heads and different parts of skeletons were found in rivers, marshes, 

 peat-bogs, in the north and east of France, in England, Germany, and 

 Italy. After careful examination, Cuvier did not hesitate to recognize 

 in these bones the relics of the urus of the ancients ; the fact was put 

 beyond doubt by comparison of texts, and studies of the characteris- 

 tics known to osteology. But that illustrious zoologist, in regarding 

 as the ])rimitive stock of our domestic species that great wild-ox de- 

 scribed by Csesar and hunted by Charlemagne's contemporaries, fell 

 into an error that is now fully admitted. Our oxen came from Asia ; 

 in spite of conditions very favorable to bodily development, they retain 

 a size far less than that of the wild species, and are distinguished from 

 them by several marks, particularly by the curve of the horns. Multi- 

 plying freely for three centuries in the pampas of South America, they 

 show no tendency to take the dimensions or other characteristics of 

 the urus, which, moreover, was never subdued to the yoke by man. 



At a later date than that of Cuvier's writings, a professor of Wilna, 

 Bojardus, obtained an almost perfect skeleton of the great ox of the 

 ancient Gallic and German forests, and, supposing the species to be 

 fossil, he gave it the name, which is now generally used, of Hosprimi- 

 genius. Of very late years, fortunate discoveries encouraged the hope 

 of success in reconstructing the history of humanity previous to his- 

 toric times, with the aid of materials obtained by excavation. Re- 

 searches carried on with extreme ardor have collected a vast number 

 of objects that throw an entirely new liglit on the life of men and 

 animals in the epoch called prehistoric. Remains of the Bos primi- 

 genius have been discovered in great quantities in grottoes, sandy de- 

 posits, and alluvial soil ; and some have been obtained from the lake 



