Bovine Animals of Scandinavia. 419 
the body ; we may hence, perhaps, with tolerable certainty con- 
clude, that the Urus, although in general more stoutly built, 
and therefore stronger than the Bison, was nevertheless much 
swifter-footed*. 
Remark: (1.)—Professor Owen has expressed a different 
opinion, in his excellent work ‘On British Fossil Mammals and 
Birds,’ p. 497, which, without doubt, is founded on the circum- 
stance of the want as yet of a fossil skeleton of each species 1m 
London. 
Remark : (2.)\—If we measure the Bison skull, of which we have 
here given a drawing, with the one Professor Owen has given 
p. 491. fig. 205, and which he calls Bison priscus, we shall find 
a great dissimilarity, particularly in the length and direction of 
the horns; it does not however hinder us from seeing that it 1s 
one and the same species, since we are convinced by many data 
that the older the strata in which the fossil bones of the same 
species occur, the larger are they. Compare the remarks on Bos 
primigenius, p. 261. 
Place of abode, &c.—This species of Ox, which in size formerly 
vied with the Urus itself, was in ancient times spread over the 
forests in almost all Europe, from Italy and France to the south 
of Scandinavia, and from England far into Asia. In all these 
places its fossil bones are found in the earth, but in most of them 
the animal itself has already long been extinct. In Scandinavia, 
the Bison lived contemporaneously with the Urus, yet, like 
the latter, it has never been found in any other tracts than 
in the southern parts of Scania, and there, even before the 
historic period, it had ceased to exist. It is true, the monk 
Adam of Bremen, who lived in the eleventh century, speaks 
of two sorts of wild oxen, the Urit and Bubali, in the north 
(Adam Bremens. Chorograph. p. 32) ; but his accounts are evi- 
dently not to be relied upon ; he places them in Lapland’s north- 
ern tracts, and in Sweden proper{, where it is certain they were 
never found ; which shows that they were not met with in the parts 
he visited and was acquainted with, and that his account either 
was grounded on tradition, or derived from other places and times 
long since past. 
To conclude: from the few fossil bones hitherto found in 
* Tt ought to be remarked, that the old Romans, who saw this colossal 
animal in the arena at Rome, characterized the Urus not only for its superior 
pee but also for its superior swiftness, “ excellenti vi et velocitate Uri.” 
un. 
+ It is to be remarked he makes the Uri to live in the water, like the 
White Bear. 
+ It is to be remembered that 4dam of Bremen never reckoned Scania as 
belonging to Sveonia, but always to Dania: though he nowhere speaks of 
wild oxen being found in his Dania—the only place in which it ever occurs 
in the north. z 
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