l62 



UNGULATES. 



SKULL OF THE AUROCHS (about ^ nat. size). After Owen. 



have been a certain amount of crossing with other species, the origin of our 

 domestic cattle is certainly to be traced back to the same wild ancestor. 



The aurochs and the half -wild and domesticated cattle of Europe are charac- 

 terised by their horns being circular in section and placed at the very summit of 

 the skull immediately over the occiput, as shown in the accompanying woodcut. 

 Where they first arise from the skull the horns have their upper border convex ; 

 and the forehead of the skull is flat or slightly concave, and much longer than 



broad, so that the sockets 

 of the eyes are separated 

 by a long interval from 

 the bases of the horns. 

 The tail is of great length. 

 The spines of the verte- 

 brae of the withers are not 

 greatly elongated, and thus 

 do not form a distinct ridge 

 in this region of the body. 

 That the wild aurochs 

 was an animal of huge 

 bulk is proved by the 

 skulls and bones found in 

 the turbaries, fens, and 



brick-earths of England and the continent. In the skull figured in the woodcut 

 the bony cores of the horns have a span of upwards of 42 inches from tip to tip, 

 and when these were covered with their horny sheaths the whole could not have 

 fallen short of 50 inches. This specimen was obtained from a turbary that is a 

 peat-bog near Athol ; but some of the skulls found in the brick-earths at Ilford, 

 in Essex, are of considerably larger dimensions, although from the more forward 

 direction of their horns the span between their tips is somewhat less. 

 Distribution and The aurochs was pursued and killed by the prehistoric hunters 

 Extinction. o f Europe, as we know from the circumstance that skulls have been 

 found with the forehead pierced by flint hatchets. The date from which it 

 disappeared from Britain is, however, uncertain, although it probably lingered 

 longer in a wild state in Scotland than in the southern districts of England. On 

 the continent there is evidence that in Julius Caesar's time the aurochs, or urus, 

 was abundant in the Hercynian, or Black, Forest of Germany. Old chronicles also 

 prove that in the middle of the sixth century these animals were found, although 

 rarely, in the province of Maine ; while there is evidence that some of them at 

 least were white in colour. In the ninth century Charlemagne hunted the aurochs 

 in the forests near Aix-la-Chapelle ; while at the close of the following century we 

 find the flesh of these animals alluded to in the rolls of an abbey in Switzerland. 

 The aurochs was met with during the route taken through Germany by the first 

 crusade, in the eleventh century ; and that it still lingered in the neighbourhood of 

 Worms during the twelfth century is indicated by the mention of the slaughter of 

 four individuals in the Nibelungen-Lied. The accounts of conflicts with gigantic 

 wild oxen, so rife in classic literature, doubtless refer to the aurochs ; and thus- 



