ANIMALS EXTINCT IN THE HISTORIC PERIOD. 335 



habitations of Lake Constance, where they have been made into uten- 

 sils. By this means every thing relating to the great-horned wild-ox 

 has become thoroughly known. The Hos lorimlgenias is no other 

 than the urus of Caesar, Seneca, and Pliny, the huhalus of Fortunatus 

 and Gregory of Tours, a species contemporaneous with the great 

 pachyderms and great carnivora extinct long before historic times, 

 but which continued to live amid the forests of Central Europe until 

 completely exterminated by men, only eight or ten centuries ago. 



The bison of the ancients, now called the aurochs, is not entirely 

 destroyed, though its early complete disappearance is threatened. It 

 yet lives in the condition of a zoological specimen, and there have been 

 opportunities of late of seeing it in some menageries. Formerly it was 

 spread over the greater part of Europe, but it has only been found 

 in certain regions since the historic period began. Aristotle mentions 

 it under the name of honasus, as an animal of Pceonia, that is, of the 

 part of Thrace wliich is now Bulgaria, and gives a tolerably exact de- 

 scription of it. That which particularly strikes the Greek author in 

 the bonasus is its body, larger than that of the common ox, the mane 

 covering its nape to the shoulders and falling over its eyes, and the 

 woolly hair, of a reddish gray on the lower parts ; marks which agree 

 only with those of the bison. Oppian and Pausanias, as well as Sen- 

 eca and Pliny, speak of the bison, so easily recognized by his heavy 

 neck and shoulders, rounded forehead, shaggy back, and long legs. 

 It was supposed that the aurochs had already disappeared from Gaul 

 at the time of the Roman invasion, because Caesar makes no mention 

 of it. The proof is imperfect, and it cannot be doubted that the bison 

 was still existing, several centuries later, together with the great wild- 

 ox, at least in Ardennes and the Vosges. It seems to have maintained 

 itself much later in the great Hercynian forest, which stretched from 

 the Rhine to the Danube ; but, since a date that cannot be exactly 

 fixed, it has ceased to inhabit the eastern parts of Eui'ope. In our 

 time there remain only a few pairs in Lithuania, in the forest of Bia- 

 lovicza and in the Caucasus. In the latter country it would appear 

 tliat the aurochs is now quite rare, for Prof. Brandt, of St. Petersburg, 

 the savant who has given most study to the mammals of Russia, had 

 fears that the disappearance of this fine animal was complete ; but he 

 learned that they were still to be met with in a locality called Rudeln. 

 More recently we have been informed that a small herd of some fifty 

 animals was known to exist near the village of Atzikhar, on the upper 

 Ouroup. Not a solitary one would remain either in Lithuania or the 

 Caucasus, did not the Russian law forbid taking or killing an aurochs 

 without imperial permission, under pain of death. 



The elk, the stag, the chamois, and the wild-goat, still belong to 

 the European fauna ; but, unless measures are taken to check the de- 

 struction of these mammals, very few centuries will pass before their 

 complete extermination. 



