THEORY OF THE EARTH. 65 



respecting the Aurochs, the Rein-deer, and Elk, 

 are all mingled with fable, they are yet sufficient 

 to prove that these animals were in some degree 

 known to them, but that the reports which had 

 reached them, had been communicated by igno- 

 rant people, and had not been corrected by a ju- 

 dicious examination *. These animals still inha- 

 bit the countries which the ancients assigned to 

 them ; and have only disappeared in such of them 

 as have been too much cultivated for their ha- 

 bits. The aurochs f and elk still exist in the fo- 

 rests of Lithuania, which were formerly continu- 

 ous with the great Hercynian Forest. The for- 

 mer of these animals still occurs in the northern 

 parts of Greece, as it did in the days of Pausa- 

 nias. The rein-deer inhabits the snowy regions 

 of the north, where it always had its abode ; it 

 changes its colour, not at pleasure, but according 

 to the change of the seasons. It was in conse- 

 quence of mistakes scarcely excusable, that it was 

 imagined to have occurred in the Pyrenees in the 

 fourteenth century $. 



* This is more particularly explained in the chapters 

 upon Deer and Oxen, in the fourth volume of Professor Cu- 

 vier's Recherches. 



t Aurochs is Bos Urus, Lin., not the Urus of the ancients, 

 which latter appears now to be extinct. 



J Buffon having read in Du Fouilloux a mutilated pas- 

 sage of Gaston-Phebus, Count de Foix, in which that prince 

 describes the chace of the rein-deer, imagined that, in the 

 time of Gaston, this animal lived in the Pyrenees ; and the 



>* K 



