THE ALCINE DEER OF THE OLD AND NEW WOELDS. 55 



had been to seeing menageries of creatures brought from 

 other climes, dragged in processions and into the arena 

 — were found in these forests. The urus or wild bull, 

 now long extinct, " in size," says Csesar, " little less than 

 the elephant, and which spares neither man nor beast 

 when they have been presented to his view." The savage 

 aurochs yet preserved in a Lithuanian forest, the elk and 

 the reindeer were their denizens, and formed the beef and 

 venison on which the fierce German hunters of old sub- 

 sisted. " The hunting of that day " may be well imagined 

 to have been very different to the most exciting of 

 modern field sports, and continued down to the thirteenth 

 century, as is shown by the well-known passage from the 

 Niebelungen poem, where the hero, Sifrid, slays some of 

 the great herbivorae — the bison, the elk, and the urus — 

 as well as " einen grimmen Schelch," about the identity 

 of which so much doubt has arisen, though the conjecture 

 has been offered by Goldfuss, Major Hamilton Smith, 

 and others, that the name refers to no other than the 

 great Irish elk or megaceros. 



The recent notices of the elk contained in some curious 

 old works on the countries of northern Europe and their 

 natural history are valuable merely as indicating the 

 presence and range of the animal in certain regions. The 

 errors and extravagances of the classic naturalists still 

 obtained, and tinged all such writings to the commence- 

 ment of the great epoch of modern natural history 

 ushered in by St. Hilaire and Cuvier. A confused 

 account of the animal is given by Scaliger, and it is 

 mentioned by Gmelin in his Asiatic travels. Olaus 

 Magnus, the Swedish bishop, says, " The elks come from 

 the north, where the inhabitants call them clg or clges." 



