252 Description of the Menagerie 
lour, stature, and carriage of a bull; their strength and agility 
are also, as he says, extreme *. 
Virgil in his Georpics, like Julius Cesar in his Commentaries, 
makes mention of only” one species of wild ox, which he also 
calls wrus. 
In the second book of his Georgics we find the following pas- 
sage: 
“ Texende sepes etiam, et pecus omne tenendum est, 
Przcipvé dum frons tenera imprudensque laborum 5 
Cui, super indiznas hyemes, solemque potentem, 
Sylv estres url assidue, capreeque sequaces 
Tiludunt.” 
Geor. lib. il. v. 374. 
In his third book he returns to the subject : 
“ Tempore non atio dicunt regiunibus illis 
Quesitas ad sacra boves Junonis, et uris 
Imparibus ductos alta ad donaria currus.’ 
sts lib. ii. ver. 531. 
Seneca and Martial distinguished, like Pliny, two species of 
wild oxen: 
“ Tibi dant variz pectora tigres, 
Tibi villosi terga bisontes, 
Latisque feri cornibus uri.” 
SENEC. Hyppol. 
‘¢ Tlli cessit atrox bubalus atque bison.” 
MARTIAT. 
As Pliny had already designated the Lonasos of Aristotle by 
the name of lubalus, it is evident that Martial had Pliny in his 
eye. 
Thus the ancients, with the exception of Cesar and Aristotle, _ 
distinguished two kinds of wild oxen, which the moderns have 
endeavoured to trace: but the inquiry has led most of our mo- 
dern naturalists to think that the oxen with humps on the 
shoulders were of the same race with the aurochs, and that all 
oxen with or without humps came from the wild ox of Lithuania. 
Gessner was the first modern naturalist who distinguished the 
bison of the ancients from the wrus; and his opinion in addition 
to Bufion’s has rendered the difficulties on the subject more in- 
tricate. It is important, in short, to know if the isons of the 
ancients were the same species with the lonasos of Aristotle, 
and if the oxen of the new continent, called improperly disons, 
belong also to the same race. Lastly, if the domestic oxen came 
* Lib. vi. 26. The edition of Julius Cesar, by Clarke, printed at 
London in 1712, gives a very large figure to the aurochs, but it is very in- 
accurate. The neck and fore legs are by far too short, and the anterior 
part is by far too broad, 
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