Bovine Animals of Scandinavia. 265 
forest in Germany, and which (according to his meaning) were 
not found in any other place, were Reindeer, which he describes 
but does not name, together with the Alces and Urus, which he 
both names and describes. The first-named was in form and the 
varied colour of its hide like a goat, but in size rather ireey oat 
had branching horns, and these were found with both male and 
female ; they 1 were longer and more elevated than in any other 
known "animal *. 
That Cesar here means the Wild Reindeer is evident to every 
zoologist. In another place (vi. cap. 20) he speaks of the halt- 
savage Germans, in his time, as using the reindeer skin for 
clothng+. Thus did the Reindeer at few exist in Germany in 
the historic period, which has also been denied. The second 
animal found in the Hercynian forest was the Alces, and the 
third was the Urus. The last-mentioned (cap. 28) was, according 
to Cesar, so colossal that it was only a little less than the 
elephant; in its external appearance, colour and form, it re- 
sembled the tame ox, but it had much larger horns, &c. It is 
thus possible, and more than possible, that Ceesar’s third Hercy- 
nian animal was the same as the three which formerly lived 
contemporaneously in Scania. But to assume with Pusch, that 
Cesar’s Urus was not the flat-foreheaded Urox, but the convex- 
foreheaded Bison, would be to reject without reason what Cesar 
expressly alleges of the likeness of the Urus to the tame ox, 
both in outward appearance, form, and enormously large horns ; 
for it is certain that the Bison never can be said to be, “ specie 
et colore et figura tauri;” neither could a Roman, who was ac- 
customed to see the large-sized, long-horned cattle in Ltaly, of 
which we have representations even from Czesar’s period, find 
the horns of the Bison so enormously large as Cesar describes 
those of the Urus{ ; for the Bison, to judge from the cores on 
the skulls that have been found among us, even in its wildest 
state (at least im Ceesar’s time), could never have had such large 
horns as the Italian tame ox. Besides, it is a fact which cannot 
be disputed, that Roman writers who speak of the Urus (by some 
called Bubalus ; which appellations were synonymous, according 
to what Pliny expressly tells us, Hist. Nat. vi. 5) exactly cha- 
racterize him by his large, wide, open horns, his strength and 
swiftness, while the characteristic of the Bison is long hair on 
the back, neck, or under the chin; and also that no one Roman 
* It is quite evident that Czesar has confused his remarks on the Reindeer 
and the £/k, so that at the same period he has inserted something that be- 
longed to the one and something to the other of these species of animals. 
t+ “ Pellibus . . . rhenonum tegimentis utuntur.” 
+ “ Amplitudine cornuum et figura et specie multum a nostrorum bovum 
cornibns differt,’ Czes. vi. 29. 
Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser.2. Vol. iv. 18 
