EXTIRPATION OF WILD QUADRUPEDS. 93 
Scottish parks, while in Irish bogs of no great apparent 
antiquity are found antlers which testify to the former exist- 
ence of a stag much larger than any extant European species. 
Two large graminivorous or browsing quadrupeds, the ur and 
the schelk, once common in Germany, have been utterly extir- 
pated, the eland and the auerochs nearly so. The Nibelungen- 
Lied, which, in the oldest form preserved to us, dates from 
about the year 1200, though its original composition no doubt 
belongs to an earlier period, thus sings: 
Chen slowe the dowghtic Sigfrid a wisent and an elk, 
sje smote four stonte nroxen and a grim and sturdie schelk.* 
Modern naturalists identify the elk with the eland, the wisent 
with the anerochs. The period when the ur and the schelk be- 
came extinct is not known. The auerochs survived in Prussia 
until the middle of the last century, but unless it is identical 
with a similar quadruped said to be found on the Caucasus, it 
now exists only in the Russian imperial forest of Bialowitz 
where about a thousand are still preserved, and in some great 
menageries, as for example that at Schdnbrunn, near Vienna, 
which, in 1852, had four specimens. The eland, which is 
closely allied to the American wapiti if not specifically the 
same animal, is still kept in the royal preserves of Prussia, to 
the number of four or five hundred individuals. The chamois 
cat-like animal, whose skeletons are frequently found in British bone-caves, 
with the lion of our times. 
The leopard (panthera), though already growing scarce, was found in Cilicia 
in Cicero’s time. See his letter to Ceelius, Hpist. ad Diversos, Lib. II., Ep. 11. 
*Mar nach sluoger schicre, cinen wisent unde elch. 
Starker ure viere, unt einen grimmen schelch. 
XVI. Aventiure. 
The testimony of the Wibelungen-Lied is not conclusive evidence that these 
quadrupeds existed in Germany at the time of the composition of that poem. 
Tt proves too much; for, a few lines above those just quoted, Sigfrid is said to 
have killed a lion, an animal which the most patriotic Teuton will hardly 
claim as a denizen of medieval Germany. 
