INTRODUCTION. XXX111 



primigenius, and the small Bos longifrons, which date, by 

 fossils, from the time of the Mammoth, continued to exist 

 in this island after it became inhabited by Man."* The 

 small shorthorned pliocene Ox is most probably still pre- 

 served in the mountain varieties of our domestic cattle. The 

 great Urus seems never to have been tamed, but to have 

 been finally extirpated in Scotland. Of the Cervine tribe, 

 the Red-deer and the Roebuck still exist in the mountainous 

 districts of the north, but, like the Aurochs in Lithuania, 

 by grace of special protective laws. The Rein-deer has, re- 

 latively to Britain, become extinct, nor will our present 

 climate permit its naturalization. The Megaceros, the 

 still larger Strongyloceros, and the remarkable Cervus 

 JBucMandi, have absolutely perished. With the diminution 

 of the great Herbivora, which would naturally follow the 

 limitation of their range of pasturage, when England be- 

 came an island, that of the Carnivora dependent on them 

 for food, would inevitably follow. But the sabre-toothed 



* Both the Urus (Bos primigenius) and the Bison prisons appear to have 

 been contemporary with Man in the North of continental Europe. Their skele- 

 tons have been found, with that of the large variety of Rein-deer which existed in 

 Germany in the time of Tacitus, in a bog in Scania by Professor Nillson, and 

 are preserved in the Museum at Lund. My friend Mr. Murchison writes to 

 me : " This Urus is most remarkable in exhibiting a wound of the apophysis 

 of the second dorsal vertebra, apparently inflicted by a javelin of one of the 

 aborigines, the hole left by which (offering its larger orifice towards the head 

 of the Ox, and the smaller orifice towards its rump,) was exactly fitted by Nillson 

 with one of the heads of the ancient stone javelins collected and described by 

 that excellent Naturalist, in his Work, entitled, " Skandinaviska Norden's Ur- 

 Invoandre, Lund, 1843." This instrument fractured the bone and penetrated 

 to the apophysis of the third dorsal vertebra, which is also injured. The 

 fractured portions are so well cemented that Nillson thinks the animal proba- 

 bly lived two or three years after. The wound must have been inflicted over the 

 horns, and the javelin must have been hurled with prodigious force." 



I am much disposed to assent to this interpretation of the wound of the great 

 extinct Ox. It is hard to conceive how such a wound could have been inflicted 

 by the horn of another Urus ; but, in interpreting these evidences of primeval 

 hostility, the combative instincts and pointed weapons of the Ox and Deer- 

 tribe, are always to be taken into the account. 



