Scicnii/i€ Intelligence. — Zoology. 409 



Academv by General Rosen from the Caucasus. This animal, 

 which is known by the name of Aurochs in France and Ger- 

 many, and by thai of Zoubre in Russia, and which Cuvier has 

 shewn to be the same as the Biso)i of the ancients, the Wisent 

 in Germany, was, in remote periods, spread ovei nearly the whole 

 of Europe. Many names of places, as Wisantensteg- and others, 

 are a memorial of it in Swabia. Its chase is sung in the Ni- 

 belungenlied. At the time, however, of the revival of letters 

 it was no longer known in Germany. It maintained itself 

 for a longer time in Prussia, and in different parts of Poland, 

 where it was seen and drawn by Herberstain. The last that 

 was killed in Prussia was in the year 1755. The younger For- 

 ster tells us that in his time it was found in Poland only, in the 

 great forest of Bialowicza,* from which it would have been extir- 

 pated by this time but for the care with which the Russian Go- 

 vernment watches over its preservation. This for a ^considerable 

 tin)e has been regarded as the only locality where the Bison was 

 to be found. It is therefore an interesting piece of intelligence 

 to the student of zoology to be informed of its presence in the 

 Caucasus, where are still to be met with the royal tiger and 

 the panther. M. Baer has instituted a minute comparison 

 between the portions lately transmitted from the Caucasus, 

 and the specimen already in possession of the Academy, and 

 which had been brought from the above named forest of 

 Bialowicza, and has found that in the former the horns are 

 sensibly more slender and shorter, and that the distance which 

 separates them or the breadth of the forehead is less. At the 

 same time he conceives that these differences proceed only from 

 the difference in sex, the Caucasian individual being a female. 

 The colour of the hair is moreover not so deep, and is miKed 

 with grey ; it is also shorter in all the anterior portions of the 

 body, and is curled only on the forehead, and on a part of 

 the neck ; but M. Baer still explains these differences as arising 

 from age, the season of the year. Sic. The hoofs and the ergats 

 — those short horny stubs placed behind and below the posterns 

 — are much shorter than in the Polish animal, which is probably 

 connected with its mountainous habitat. There are no other dif- 

 ferences between these two bisons, so far at least as can be judged 



* An interesting account of the FoMst of Bialowicza will be found in one 

 if the volumes of this Journal. 



