1 2 Oxen 



travelled frequently in Poland, and the figures of the two annuals may be 

 regarded as having been executed under his own immediate supervision. 

 It has indeed been urged that the portrait of the aurochs is that ot a 

 domestic bullock, but Messrs. Nehring and Schiemenz have conclusively 

 shown that this is not the case, and that the original of the picture was a 

 wild Polish aurochs. In Herberstain's time, that is to say at least as late 

 as the middle of the sixteenth century, the aurochs was preserved in a 

 single Polish .forest, as is the bison at the present day in another. The 

 forest in question is that of Jaktorowka, situated about fifty-five kilometres 

 to the west-south-west of Warsaw in the districts of Bolemow and 

 Sochaczew. Other evidence is to the eftect that the last survivor of the 

 herd in this forest was slain in the year 1627. Regarding its survival in 

 other districts, a skull preserved for centuries in the castle of Bromberg, 

 Prussia, which shows three spear-wounds on the forehead, is stated to 

 afford decisive evidence that the aurochs lived on in that part of the 

 country at least as late as the twelfth or thirteenth century. It is further 

 evident that, like its cousin the bison, the aurochs was a forest-dwelling 

 animal. 



Such being the case, it may be taken as practically certain that several 

 of the breeds of European cattle are the immediate descendants of the 

 aurochs. Calves of the latter were probably caught and tamed by the early 

 inhabitants of Europe, and tlieir progeny gave birth to some at least of the 

 present European breeds, for which there is accordingly no need to seek 

 an Eastern origin. That the domesticated breed would become smaller 

 than the wild ancestral race is only what might naturally be expected ; a 

 precisely analogous instance occurring in the yak, of which the race 

 domesticated in the Bhutan and Darjiling districts bear no comparison to 

 the wild animal, or even to the semi-domesticated breed kept by the 

 nomads of the Rupshu plateau. 



Although otherwise white, the half-wild Chillingham cattle usually 



