at Scheenbrunn in Austria. 253 
from the wild oxen of Pzonia and Lithuania, or rather from 
another primitive stock. ‘The most illustrious naturalist of our 
days (Buffon) endeavours to throw light on these delicate ques- 
tions, without doing so, however, in the most satisfactory man- 
ner. Messrs. Cuvier, Lacépéde, and Geoffroy have together 
nearly set the matter at rest. It results from their observations: 
1. That it appears very clear that the bonasos of Aristotle is 
the same animal with the uwrus of Julius Cesar, and that the 
bison of the Romans is this very lonasos, to which the appella- 
tion of bubalus has also been given. 
2. That the ox with the hunch of the new continent, named 
improperly bison, is a species of ox which has nothing in com- 
on with the lonasos of Aristotle, who does not seem to have 
esi the ox with the hunch. Besides, if Aristotle had known 
an ox with a hunch, he would not have asserted in the same place 
where he speaks of the lonasos, that the camel was the only 
guadruped which had a hunch on the back. 
3. That we ought to acknowledge the zebra as the source 
of our race of domestic oxen, rather than the aurochs, which 
differs from the former by characters which it is not usual for 
nature to vary. 
4. That the name of wrus, applied by Julius Cesar to the ani- 
mal just described, might be a name originally German, as Al- 
droyandus and Gessner have already imagined ; and this opinion 
appears to us much more probable than that of Macrobius, 
who regarded the name of urus as a French word. _ In fact, the 
Germans still designate the wras by the name of auer-ochs, wald- 
*echs, and wr-ochs, which signifies properly wild ox, or ox of the 
forests. Those who are familiar with the German language 
know how easy it is to imagine that the varieties in pronuncia- 
. }tion adopted in Germany might have changed the word wrus 
into aurochs: the fact is, the former is merely a softer pronun- 
\eiation of the word. Servius explains the word wrus in a man- 
| mer much more learned; and he derives it from the Greek word 
6g05, which signifies mountain. 
Description of the Aurochs or Bos Urus. 
» | The size of the aurochs does not much surpass that of our 
i¢ largest-sized domestic oxen: but its form is much thicker and 
¢, squatter. This thickness is the more remarkable when we 
pare it with the anterior part of the body of the urus, which 
much broader, This greater breadth is particularly remark- 
in the legs, But their larger size seems to depend merely 
ithe muscles; for in the skeletons of the various species we 
hot remark any very marked differences. 
The 
