HISTORY. 233 



Bisons differ from the Uri, which have the form of an Ox, 

 in having manes, and long hairs about the neck, in having a 

 beard hanging from the chin, and in smelling of musk." In 

 an ancient poem on a hunting match near Worms, we have 

 a distinct account of the number of Bisons, Uri, and Elks, 

 which were respectively slain ; and various chroniclers refer 

 to the hunting of the ancient Uri in the forests of Europe. 

 Heberstein, De Rebus Muscov., and Martin Cromer, De Situ 

 Polonise, writers of the sixteenth century, describe the dis- 

 tinction between the Bison or Zubr of the Poles, and the 

 Thur of the same nation ; and Anthony Schneibergen de- 

 scribes the Thur as differing from the domestic race only in 

 size and colour. Yet, in the middle ages, Albertus Magnus, 

 and other writers, fell into the error of confounding those 

 animals ; and several German writers applied the term 

 Urochs or Auerochs, the undoubted designation of their own 

 Urus, to the Bison ; and modern naturalists, in opposition to 

 the testimony of the older writers, are yet found to maintain 

 the same error.* 



* Fossil skulls have been found in various parts of Europe resembling those 

 of the domestic races, and differing from them only in size. But these bones 

 indicate an animal greatly surpassing in magnitude any of the modern races 

 of cattle. They are usually about one-third or more larger in linear size, 

 indicating an animal nearly three times the bulk of the oxen of the present 

 time. Their remains are found in the same alluvial deposites as those of 

 the Elephant, and other large animals which formerly inhabited Europe, prov- 

 ing that they lived at the same era : they are found likewise in the pame situa- 

 tions as the great extinct Irish Elk, and thus seem to have survived various 

 species with which they were associated, and even, perhaps, to have survived 

 till within the historic era. A question, however, which has been agitated by 

 naturalists is, Whether these huge animals are the origin of the domestic races, 

 and may not even have been the Uri described by Caesar ? The question is one 

 which bears less than is assumed upon the origin of the existing races. We 

 can, bv all the evidence which the question admits of, trace existing races to 

 the ancient Uri which, long posterior to the historical era, inhabited the forests 

 of Germany, Gaul, Britain, and other countries. It is a question involving an 

 entirely different series of considerations, whether these Uri were themselves 

 descended from an anterior race, surpassing them in magnitude, and inhabit- 

 ing the globe at the same time with other extinct species. While there is 

 nothing that can directly support this hypothesis, there is nothing certainly 

 founded on analogy that can enable us to invalidate it. There is nothing more 



