INTRODUCTION. XXX1il 
primgenius, and the small Los longifrons, which date, by 
fossils, from the time of the Mammoth, continued to exist 
in this island after it became inhabited by Man.* The 
small shorthorned pliocene Ox is most probably still pre- 
served in the mountain varieties of our domestic cattle. The 
great Urus seems never to have been tamed, but to have 
been finally extirpated in Scotland. Of the Cervine tribe, 
the Red-deer and the Roebuck still exist in the mountainous 
districts of the north, but, like the Aurochs in Lithuania, 
by grace of special protective laws. The Rein-deer has, re- 
latively to Britain, become extinct, nor will our present 
climate permit its naturalization. The Megaccros, the 
still larger Strongyloceros, and the remarkable Cervus 
Bucklandi, have absolutely perished. With the diminution 
of the great Herbivora, which would naturally follow the 
limitation of their range of pasturage, when England be- 
came an island, that of the Carnivora dependent on them 
for food, would inevitably follow. But the sabre-toothed 
* Both the Urus (Bos primigenius) and the Bison priscus appear to have 
been contemporary with Man in the North of continental Europe. Their skele- 
tons have been found, with that of the large variety of Rein-deer which existed in 
Germany in the time of Tacitus, in a bog in Scania by Professor Nillson, and 
are preserved in the Museum at Lund. My friend Mr. Murchison writes to 
me :—“ This Urus is most remarkable in exhibiting a wound of the apophysis 
of the second dorsal vertebra, apparently inflicted by a javelin of one of the 
aborigines, the hole left by which (offering its larger orifice towards the head 
of the Ox, and the smaller orifice towards its rump,) was exactly fitted by Nillson 
with one of the heads of the ancient stone javelins collected and described by 
that excellent Naturalist, in his Work, entitled, “ Skandinaviska Norden’s Ur- 
Invoandre, Lund, 1842.” This instrument fractured the bone and penetrated 
to the apophysis of the third dorsal vertebra, which is also injured. The 
fractured portions are so well cemented that Nillson thinks the animal proba- 
bly lived two or three years after. The wound must have been inflicted over the 
horns, and the javelin must have been hurled with prodigious force.” 
I am much disposed to assent to this interpretation of the wound of the great 
extinct Ox. It is hard to conceive how such a wound could have been inflicted 
by the horn of another Urus ; but, in interpreting these evidences of primeval 
hostility, the combative instincts and pointed weapons of the Ox and Deer- 
tribe, are always to be taken into the account. 
