Mav, 1902.] 



KNOWLEDGE. 



101 



wliether it siffiiifios the old or priiiu'val ox. Be this as it 

 may, the wild ox, which may oveu iu Cicsar's time have 

 been ijrowing scarce, gradually became rarer and rarer 

 during the middle atres, till it linally disappeared in the 

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

 still remained amon^; the peasantry of Eastern Europe, 

 and as there was no species to which it could |iossil)ly 

 apply save the bison, which then still survived in Poland 

 and elsewhere, it was transferred to that animal, of 

 which, as already mentioned, it became the common 

 desii;nation. A precisely analogous instance has occurred 

 in Eastern Russia. The bison, iu place of being restricted, 

 as now, to Lithuania and the Caucasus, was formerly much 

 more widely distributed. When it disapj>eared from 

 certain districts, its name still survived, and became 

 transferred by the peasants to the eastern race of the red 

 deer, as the only large wild ungulate with which they 

 were acijuainted. 



As regards the gradual extermination of the aurochs 

 as a wild animal during the middle ages, much important 

 eviiience has been collected of late years by Messrs. Nehring 

 and Schiemenz. 



During the Pleistocene epoch, when the mammoth and 

 the woolly rhinoceros inhabited the British Islands and 

 the Continent (which were then one), the aurochs was a 

 common animal, as is attested by the abundance of its 

 remains in formations of that age. Some of the finest and 

 largest skulls of this so-called Hox j'riinitji'nius were ob- 

 tained by the late Sir Antonio Brady from the brick-earths 

 ot Ilford, in Essex. Other skulls have been obtained from 

 the peat of Perthshire, from Burwell Fen, Cambridgeshire, 

 and from a peaty deposit at Newbury, in Berkshire. A 

 skull from Burwell Fen, in the Woodwardian Museum, at 

 Cambridge, has a tlint-im]ilement embedded iu the fore- 

 head, thus showing that the animal was hunted by the 

 Prehistoric inhabitants of our islands at a time when the 

 niammuth and rhinoceros had already disappeared. 



As to the date of the extermination of the wild aurochs 

 in Britain there is no decisive evidence, but uo skulls or 

 other remains have hitherto been identified from deposits 

 of Roman or later age. It is, of course, possible that it 

 may have survived till the epoch iu ijuestion, or later, in 

 the more remote parts of the kingdom, and Prof. Dawkins 

 has even suggested that the huiri sylvenfres mentioned by 

 Fitzstephen, who wrote his "Life of Beckett" iu the 

 reign of Henry II., as inhabiting the forests round London, 

 were aboriginally wild animals. On the other hand, they 

 may equally well" have been cattle that had run wild, and 

 this is confinned by Bishop Leslie, of Ross, who stated in 

 1598 that the Bos sylvestris of the Caledonian Forest was 

 white. 



On the Continent, we have the evidence of Cssar as to 

 the o-existence of the aurochs or urus in the Hercvniau, 

 or Black, Forest with the bison and the elk. And' it is 

 related how the young German warriors of that time 

 pi-epared themselves for war by hunting and killing the 

 fierce aurochs. A remarkable confirmation of the truth of 

 Ciesar's statc-ment as to the co-existence of the aurochs 

 and bison on thr Continent during the period of the Roman 

 occupation is afforded by the discovery in Swabia, during 

 the widening of a railway in 189-5, of two statuettes of oxen 

 belonging to the Roman period. They were dug \ip in loam 

 at a depth of nine feet 1)elow the surface, and have been 

 descril)ed and figured by Prof. E. Fraas.* The one, as 

 shown by the great elevation and depth of the fore- 

 quarters, clearly represents the l)ison. The other, on the 

 contrary, is as evidently intended for the aurochs. The 

 horns have beeu broken off in both specimens, but what 



• " Fimdbprii-lit* uus Schwaben,"' Vul. VII., p. 37 (ISOO). 



remains of them agrees in each instance with the form 

 they should assume. In stating that both species inhabited 

 the Black Forest contfuiporaneously, it is not meant that 

 they were actually found in com])any. On the contrary, 

 it is more probable, as pointed out by Dr. Nehring, that 

 while the one frequented the low-lying and swampy forests, 

 the other resorted to the higher and drier woods. 



Of later chronicles than Ciesar's, one describing the 

 wars of Charlemagne in the early part of the ninth century 

 alludes to the king going to hunt bison or aurochs 

 {hisonliiiiti eel iironim) in the forests of Aix-la-Chapelle. 

 The use of the term rcl is a little amVjiguous, but Prof. 

 Dawkins considers that the passage indicates the occurrence 

 of l)oth species in the forest, while he is also of opinion 

 that the animal slain by Charlemagne was undoubtedly an 

 aurochs. Of special importance is the mention of both 

 bison and aurochs (urus) in a grace used at the Abbey of 

 St. Gall about the year 1000. Another importaut state- 

 ment is to the effect that aurochs and elk were met with 

 by the First Crusade when crossing Germany at the close 

 of the eleventh century, special reference being made to 

 the enormous size of the horns of the former .animals. 

 Again, in the " Niebelungen-Lied," of the twelfth century, 

 Tregfried is related to have killed a bison and four aurochs 

 near Worms. 



At the time Professor Dawkins wrote the account, to 

 which reference has been already made, nothing more was 

 known concerning the history of aurochs from the evidence 

 of contemporary writers till the time of Gesner (1622). 

 A work by the German writer Herberstain, entitled 

 ■■ Moscovia," of which an Italian translation was published 

 at Venice in 1550, affords, however, the most important 

 evidence of any as to the survival of the aurochs in Poland 

 (and probably also in Hungary) during the latter Middle 

 Ages. In this work appear woodcuts — rude, it is true, 

 but still characteristic and unmistakable— of two perfectly 

 distinct types of European wild cattle ; one being the 

 aurochs, or ur, and the other the bisoii. As Herberstain 

 had travelled frequently in Poland, it is probable that he 

 had seen lioth species alive, and the drawings were most 

 likely executed under his own immediate supervision and 

 direction. It has beeu suggested that the figure of the 

 aurochs was taken from a domesticated ox, but Messrs. 

 Nehring and Schiemenz have shown that this is quite a 

 mistaken idea. Not the least important feature of the 

 work of Herberstain is the application of the name 

 aurochs to the wild ox, as distinct from the bison. 

 The locality where aurochs survived in Herberstain's time 

 was the Forest of Jaktozowka, situated about 55 kilometres 

 west-south-west of Warsaw, iu the provinces of Bolemow 

 and Sochaczew. From other evidence it appears that the 

 last aurochs was killed in this forest in the year 1627. It 

 is important to notice that Herberstain describes the 

 colour of the aurochs as black, and this is confirmed by 

 another old picture of the animal. Gesner's figure of the 

 aurochs, or as he calls it, " thur," given in his " History 

 of Animals," published in 1622, was probably adapted 

 from HerliL-rstain's. It may be added that an ancient 

 gold goblet dejiicts the hunting and taming of the wild 

 aurochs.* 



As a wild animal, then, the aurochs appears to have 

 ceased to exist in the early part of the seventeenth century ; 

 but as a species' it is still among us, for there can be no 

 doubt the majority of the domesticated breeds of European 

 cattle are its descendants, all diminished in point of size, 

 and some departing more widely from the original type 

 than others. Aurochs' calves were in all probability cap- 

 tured by the prehistoric inhabitants of IBritain and the 



* See Keller, Olobuf, Vol. LXXII., Xo. 22 (1807). 



