EX'l'IRPATION OF WILD QUADRUPEDS. 91 



larger than any extant European species. Two large graminivor- 

 ous or browsing quadrupeds, the ur and the schelk, once common 

 in Germany, have been utterly extirpated, 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 earher period, thus 

 sings : 



®l)cn sloroe tlic boragljtie Sigfrib a roisent anh an elk, 



^c smote four stoutc uroxcn mib a grim anb sturbie scljelk. * 



Modern naturalists identify the elk with the eland, the wisent with 

 the auerochs. The period when the ur and the schelk became ex- 

 tinct is not known. The auerochs survived in Prussia until the 

 middle of the last century, but unless it is identical with a similar 

 quadi'uped 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 Schonbrunn, near Yienna, which, in 1852, had four speci- 

 mens. The eland is still kept in the royal preserves of Prussia to 

 the number of four or five hundred individuals, f The chamois 

 is becoming rare, and the ibex or steinbock, once common in all 

 the high Alps, is now beheved to be confined to the Cogne 

 mountains in Piedmont, between the valleys of the Dora Baltea 

 and the Oreo, though it is said that a few still Hnger about the 

 Grandes Jorasses near Cormayeur. 



The chase, which in early stages of human life was a necessity, 

 has become with advancing civihzation not merely a passion but 

 a dilettanteism, and the cruel records of this pastime are among 



* V3cix naci) sluogcr scljiere, nnen toisent unbe elcl). 

 Starker nre tjicre, tint cincn grimmen scfjekl). 



XVI. Aveniiure. 



The testimony of the Nibelungen-IAed is not conclusive e%idence that these 

 quadrupeds existed in Germany at the time of the composition of that poem. 

 It 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 mediaeval ■Germany. 



f The animal now generally called eland is an African species of the antelope 

 family, Oreas carina. The name was doubtless transferred to the African ani- 

 mal by the Dutch colonists. 



