WHERE 
ANTIENTLY¥ 
FOUND. 
WHERE AT 
PRESENT. 
Europe, 
Asta, 
Bt sew NN. 
The Bifon and Aurochs of Europe is certainly the fame fpecies witly 
this ; the difference confifts in the former being lefs fthaggy, and the 
hair neither fo foft nor woolly, nor the hind parts fo weak. Both 
European and American kinds fcent of mufk. 
In antient times. they were found in different parts of the old 
world, but went under different names ; the Bona/us of Ariffotle, the 
Urus of Cefar, the Bos ferus of Strabo, the Bifon of Pliny, and the 
Bifton of Oppian, fo called from its being found among: the Biffones,, 
a people of Thrace. According to: thefe authorities, it was found in 
their days in Media and in Paonia, a province of Macedonia ; among 
the 4/ps, and in the great Hercynian foreft, which extended: from Ger- 
many even into Sarmatia*. In later days a white fpecies was a na- 
tive of the Scottifh mountains; it is now extinét in its favage ftate, 
but the offspring, fufficiently wild, is ftill to be feen in the parks of 
Drumlanrig, in the South of Scotland, and of Chillingham Caftle in: 
Northumberland +. 
In thefe times it is found in very few places in a ftate of nature; 
it is, as far as we know, an inhabitant at prefent only of the forefts 
of Lithuania, and among the Carpathian mountains, within the extent. 
of the great Hercynian wood f, its antient haunts; and in 4fa, among. 
the vaft mountains of Cauca/us. 
It is dificult to fay in what manner thefe: animals migrated ori- 
ginally from the old to the new world; it is. moft likely it was. 
from the north of Afia,. which in very antient times might have been. 
ftocked with them to its moft extreme parts, notwithftanding they. 
are now extinct. At that period there is a probability that the old: 
and the new continents might have been united in the narrow chan- 
nel between Tchutki nofs and the oppofite headlands of America s 
® Ariftot. Hift. An. Vid. ite. c. 1-—Cafar Bel. Gall. libs vi. —Plinii Hift, Nat, libs 
XV. Co 15«— Oppian Cyneg. ii. Lin. 160. 
+ Br. Zool. i. N° 3.—Vay. Hebrides, 124.—Tour. Scotl. 1772, Part li, p. 285. 
} There is a very fine figure of the European Bifen in Mr. Ridinger’s Faghere T biere: 
and 
