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 in 

 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 prisons, 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 is 

 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 Urif 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 



* It ought to be I'emarked, that the old Romans, who saw this colossal 

 animal in the arena at Rome, characterized the Urus not only for its superior 

 strength, but also for its superior swiftness, " excellent! vi et velocitate Uri." 

 Plin. 



t It is to be remarked he makes the Uri to live in the water, like the 

 White Bear. 



X It is to be remembered that Adam oi Bremen never reckoned Scania as 

 belonging to Sveonia, but always to Daiiia ; though he nowhere speaks of 

 wild oxen being found in his Dania — the only place in which it ever occurs 

 in the north. 



28* 



