B I S 



463 



B I S 



The distinctions, however, are not confined to the skele- 

 ton, for the tongue of the aurochs is blue, according to 

 Gilibert, who thus points out, in addition, the following 

 external differences : 



' The hairs of the cow are stiff and sessile upon the skin ; 

 those of the female Bison are soft and make an obtuse 

 angle. In the cow they are uniform ; in the Bison there 

 are two kinds, as in the beaver, one kind short and yellow, 

 the others longer and of a blackish chesnut. The longest 

 are at the bottom of the neck near the shoulders, and those 

 of the male are fourfold longer than those of the female. 

 There are still longer ones under the lower jaw and neck, 

 and those of the front limbs descend to the mid-leg, and 

 sometimes to the feet. They are all soft and woolly ; along 

 the nape to the hump there is a succession of sub-erected 

 hairs ; but upon the back and hinder parts the hair is short, 

 which makes those parts appear delicate in proportion to 

 those of the ox. The tail descends to the hock, and is 

 furnished with long and thick hairs towards the extremity. 

 In summer the aurochs loses the greatest part of its long 

 hair, and then has an entirely different aspect, but it only 

 gets the short hair by little and little, and its skin is never 

 naked. It is the hair of the summit of the head particu- 

 larly that gives out an odour of musk, especially in winter ; 

 but this odour is lost by degrees in the domesticated state. 

 The hair of the males is blackest, and that of tho front is 

 longer and more curly ; the odour is strongest in them, but 

 the horns are small in both sexes. The thickness of the 

 hi<le of the aurochs is double that of a common bull's hide. 

 The individuals which have been observed alive showed a 

 great antipathy to the common cattle.' 



There can be little doubt that the Bison jubatus of Pliny 

 (book viii. c. 15, and xxviii. c. 10), which he seems to dis- 

 tinguish from the Urus, was the European Bison at Aurochs ; 

 and though in the fifteenth chapter of the eighth book he 

 mentions the tradition of a wild beast in Pa?onia called a 

 Bonatut, after he has dismissed his Bisontes jubati, and 

 with every appearance of a conclusion on his part that the 

 Bonatut and Bison were not identical, his own description, 

 when compared with that of Aristotle, will leave little doubt 

 that the Bison jubatus and Bonasui of Pliny and others, 

 the Bovoa-ooc or Eovaaoy of Aristotle (for the word is written 

 both ways), and the B;<TUV of Oppian,* were no other than 

 the European Biton, the Aurochs (Auerocha) of the Prus- 

 sians, the Zubr of the Pules, the Taurus Paonius, &c. of 

 .lonston and others, I' Aurochs and le #wia*sof Buftbn, Bo* 

 Uru* of Boddaert, and Bo* Bonasus of Linnseus. . 



r Bison Europa'us.; 



Cuvier^ considers it as certain that this animal, the 

 largest, or at least the most massive of all existing qua- 

 drupeds after the rhinoceros, an animal still to be found in 

 some of the Lithuanian forests, and perhaps in those of 



Oppian'i lively description of these) indomitable Bisons, .with their thick 

 Mekl and shaggy manes <f,t,fx).im xxirm pii (Tuftcda* llko t " ose 

 lioni (CyneRet. 2. 159, et q.) cannot be mistaken. 



Moldavia, Wallachia, and the neighbourhood of the Cauca- 

 sus, is a distinct species which man has never subdued ; nor 

 do we think that any one who takes the trouble to consider 

 the evidence on which Cuviev's conclusion was founded will 

 be of a different opinion. Following out this subject with his 

 usual industry and ability, that great naturalist goes on to 

 state (Ossemens Fossiles) that if Europe possessed a Urus, 

 a Thur of the Poles, different from the Bison or the Aurochs 

 of the Germans, it is only in its remains that the species 

 can be traced; such remains are found, in the skulls of a 

 species of ox different from the aurochs, in the superficial 

 beds of certain districts. This Cuvier thinks must be the 

 true Urus of the antients, the original of our domestic ox, 

 the stock perhaps whence our wild cattle descended ; while 

 the aurochs of the present day is nothing more than the 

 Bison or Bonasus of the antients, a species which has never 

 been brought under the yoke. [See Ox and URUS.] 



This antient species is fast following its extinct congener 

 the Uruf. Pallas observes, that it is remarkable that the 

 aurochs does not exist in any of the vast forests of Russia 

 and Northern Asia, whence (if it had penetrated therein) 

 hardly any thing could have eradicated it. As late as the 

 reign of Charlemagne it was not rare in Germany, but the 

 range of the species is now nearly confined to the moun- 

 tainous country between the Caspian and Black Seas. 



Cuvier, in the first edition of his ' Ossemens Fossiles,' 

 considered the fossil skulls of oxen found in Europe as be- 

 longing to the aurochs, and those of Siberia as the crania of 

 an extinct species ; but, in his last, he declares tliat he has 

 recognized both as the skulls of the same species, and opens 

 the question. These skulls, though they differ scarcely in 

 anything from those of the aurochs, he inclines to think 

 the remains of a different species. He gives the portrait of 

 a cranium in the Museum at Paris, here copied,* 



[Skull of suppose-! Ibssil Aurochs. Fr< nt view.] 



1'iolile of the samp.] 



so like, as he observes, to the living aurochs, that the most 

 practised eye can scarcely distinguish it ; but so fresh that 

 he seems to think it recent, and that it owes its fossil ap- 



N.B. The crania figured in this article are all taken from Cuvwr's 'Otie- 

 mens Fossiles.' 



