THE WILD OX OF EUROPE 295 



with the horns) was preserved in the town-hall at Worms, 

 and another at Mayence. Probably both have long since 

 perished. 



Seeing that horns are almost unknown in a fossil state, 

 it might well have been thought that, with the loss of the 

 historic Zabern specimen, the last example of an aurochs- 

 horn has disappeared for ever. By a lucky chance, a 

 nearly perfect horn of the wild ox has, however, been 

 recently discovered in a peat-bog in Pomerania, together 

 with a fragment of the bony horn-core on which it was 

 supported during life. The specimen has been described 

 by Dr. Nehring, and proved to belong unquestionably to 

 the aurochs, as distinct from the bison. 



The mention of both aurochs and bison in the preceding 

 sentence renders it desirable to allude to a matter which 

 has been the cause of considerable confusion and mis- 

 conception. Until within the last few years, nearly all 

 naturalists regarded these two names as synonymous, and 

 applied them both to the bison ; or rather, in many cases 

 dropped the latter name altogether, and miscalled the 

 animal to which it belongs the aurochs. The same practice 

 is largely followed by sportsmen at the present day. 

 In old German the wild ox appears to have been called 

 indifferently either ur or auerochs-, the former name being 

 Latinised by Caesar into Urus. Auerochs, according to the 

 usual interpretation, signifies mountain or wild ox ; but 

 opinions differ as to whether ur has a similar meaning, or 

 whether it signifies the old or primeval ox. Be this as it 

 may, the wild ox, which may even in Caesar's time have 

 been growing scarce, gradually became rarer and rarer 

 during the Middle Ages, till it finally disappeared in the 

 first half of the seventeenth century. The name, however, 

 still remained among the peasantry of Eastern Europe, and 



