39 o NORTHERN EUROPE 



the bison are swampy forests, where it lives principally on leaves, twigs, and bark. 

 It is active by day and night but generally feeds in the morning and evening. 

 Bison live in small herds, numbering from fifteen to twenty in summer, increasing in 

 winter to thirty or forty, and consisting of cows and young bulls ; old bulls join the 

 herds in August or the beginning of September, when the pairing takes place. 

 At this time the bulls often utter a loud short roar, meant as a challenge, and 

 frequently unroot small trees, often breaking the points of their horns in so 

 doing. Their musky odour is more pronounced than at other times, and they often 

 indulge in furious battles with their rivals, which begin as if in play, but generally 

 end in the death of one of the combatants. In May or June the calves are born 

 in the most retired parts of the forest, the cows risking their lives rather than 

 allowing their offspring to be taken from them. The bison is a shy animal, living 

 in secluded places, especially during its early years. Only during pairing-time is 

 it dangerous, when the old bulls will attack human beings or even vehicles, and 

 occasionally take up their position on a road to threaten every traveller. Not- 

 withstanding its apparent clumsiness, the bison trots and gallops quickly, generally 

 fleeing from approaching danger with lowered head and elevated tail. At the 

 present day it is on the verge of extermination, the Caucasus being the only tract 

 where it survives in a purely wild state. Although growing there to a considerable 

 stature, it is said to have shorter hair than the bison preserved in the forest of 

 Bielowitza and the neighbouring park, as well as in the adjoining forest of Swiss- 

 lotsch, in Lithuania. The bison of the Caucasus represents a distinct race, stated 

 to present certain structural resemblances to the American species. 



In prehistoric times the bison and its apparently extinct relative Bos priscus 

 ranged over the greater part of Europe, and were by no means rare in Germany, 

 Switzerland, Italy, France, and England. Fossil remains apparently indicate the 

 former existence of bison in Siberia, and perhaps also in Alaska. Cresar found 

 bison in Germany and Belgium ; they seem to have survived in Poland up to the 

 year 1500, and in 1534 they were so common near Girgau in Transylvania that 

 peasants were sometimes run over and trampled to death by frightened herds, and 

 hunting-parties were formed to diminish their numbers. One killed in East Prussia 

 in 1755 had probably strayed from Lithuania, for the East Prussian bison had been 

 confined to the forest between Tilsit and Labiau since the beginning of the seven- 

 teenth century. A list of game taken by the Elector Johann Sigismund from 1612 

 to 1619 mentions only forty-two bison among 11,861 head of other kinds. King 

 Augustus in. of Poland, who arranged a great bison-hunt in the forest of Bielo- 

 witza on the 27th September 1752, shot forty-two, or according to other reports 

 sixty in one day. The King was accompanied by the Queen and the nobility, and the 

 bison, being royal game, were hunted with from 2000 to .3000 beaters, no less than 

 twenty being killed by the Queen herself. The bison were driven between two 

 strong fences forming a V ; the illustrious hunters awaiting them on a platform 

 erected in the centre of the angle, from which position they could shoot without 

 difficulty. 

 Domesticated The ancestor of domestic cattle was not the bison but the 



cattle. aurochs( Bos ta urns primigenius), remains of which are found in almost 

 every country in Europe. There are records of its being hunted in Germany so 



