Bovine Animals of Scandinavia. 263 
the forests of the Hartz. He says that they in external form and 
colour fully resembled the common ox, but in point of magnitude 
they were little less than the elephant. They were both strong 
and swift, at the same time so spiteful that they spared neither 
man nor animal when they once caught sight of them. With 
the chase of these animals the Germanic youth became hardened, 
and the greater the number of horns of dead oxen they could 
exhibit, the more highly were they esteemed. These horns, 
which were larger than the common ox-horn, were frequently 
edged with silver and used as drinking vessels at great festivals 
(Jul. Cesar, Bell. Gall. vi. cap. 28). Also our forefathers and 
other descendants of the Germanic race appropriated the horns 
of the Urox to the same use. Pliny affirms that the northern 
peoples (Barbari septentrionales) drank out of Urox-horns, which 
were so large that one contaimed an urna* (Plin. Hist. Nat. u. 
cap. 37). Solinus mentions, that this horn, on account of its 
great capacity, was used as a drinking-vessel at royal feasts. 
From the hide of the Urox our Germanic forefathers made 
girdles, and the flesh was eaten as palatable and healthy. 
Remarks.—The earlier existence of the Urox as a different 
species from the Bison can no longer be doubted, seeing that we 
possess not only the skulls but also entire skeletons of both ; but 
in later times a violent contest has arisen touching the question 
how far this animal existed in Europe during the age of history, 
and how far it is this species that is alluded to by the Roman 
authors under the denomination Urus (sometimes by them called 
Bubalus), and by the German writers of the middle age by that 
of Ure ; or, whether this name applied only to that one species of 
Bison which German and our own middle-age writers call Wisent. 
It is more especially Professor Pusch of Warsaw who in later 
times has maintained the latter opinion. If the question be, 
whether this colossal, flat-foreheaded species of Ox, which we 
here call Urus, lived in Europe, and at various times and even in 
Scania after the country had been inhabited by men, the answer 
requires no learned historical or philological research, no wasting 
of time and trouble which might be employed on more useful 
objects ; it requires for such an object only to visit the Museum 
at the University of Lund and to spect one of the Urox skele- 
tons preserved there, which I had the honour of presenting to 
the Museum, and which in the year 1840 was taken up under 
* A Roman urna holds in Swedish measure 4,9, kans. Pliny’s account 
seems rather exaggerated, partly because a drinking vessel that holds 4-5 
kans was too heavy and too large even for the stoutest drinker; and partly 
because a horn of the largest Urox-skull, among the Scanian ones which I 
have before me, did not hold more (counting from the base) than about 14 
kan, 
