Bovine Animals of Scandinavia. 263 



the forests of the Hartz. He says that they in external form and 

 colour fully resembled the common ox, but in point of magnitude 

 they were little less than the elephant. They were both strong 

 and swift, at the same time so spiteful that they spared neither 

 man nor animal when they once caught sight of them. With 

 the chase of these animals the Germanic youth became hardened, 

 and the greater the number of horns of dead oxen they could 

 exhibit, the more highly were they esteemed. These horns, 

 which were larger than the common ox-horn, were frequently 

 edged with silver and used as drinking vessels at great festivals 

 (Jul. Caesar, Bell. Gall. vi. cap. 28). Also our forefathers and 

 other descendants of the Germanic race appropriated the horns 

 of the Urox to the same use. Pliny affirms that the northern 

 peoples [Barbari septentrionales) drank out of Urox-horns, which 

 were so large that one contained an urna* (Plin. Hist. Nat. ii. 

 cap. 37). Solinus mentions, that this horn, on account of its 

 great capacity, was used as a drinking-vessel at royal feasts. 



From the hide of the Urox our Germanic forefathers made 

 girdles, and the flesh was eaten as palatable and healthy. 



Remarks. — The earlier existence of the Urox as a different 

 species from the Bison can no longer be doubted, seeing that we 

 possess not only the skulls but also entire skeletons of both ; but 

 in later times a violent contest has arisen touching the question 

 how far this animal existed in Europe during the age of history, 

 and how far it is this species that is alluded to by the Roman 

 authors under the denomination Urus (sometimes by them called 

 Bubalus), and by the German writers of the middle age by that 

 of Ure ; or, whether this name applied only to that one species of 

 Bison which German and our own middle-age writers call Wisent, 

 It is more especially Professor Pusch of Warsaw who in later 

 times has maintained the latter opinion. If the question be, 

 whether this colossal, flat-foreheaded species of Ox, which we 

 here call Urus, lived in Europe, and at various times and even in 

 Scania after the country had been inhabited by men, the answer 

 requires no learned historical or philological research, no wasting 

 of time and trouble which might be employed on more useful 

 objects ; it requires for such an object only to visit the Museum 

 at the University of Lund and to inspect one of the Urox skele- 

 tons preserved there, which I had the honour of presenting to 

 the Museum, and which in the year 1840 was taken up under 



* A Roman urna holds in Swedish measure 4-fe kans. Pliny's account 

 seems rather exaggerated, partly because a drinking-vessel that holds 4-5 

 kans was too heavy and too large even for the stoutest drinker ; and partly 

 because a horn of the largest Urox-skull, among the Scanian ones which I 

 have before me, did not hold more (counting from the base) than about 1 ^ 

 kan. 



