Bovine Animals of Scandinavia. 265 



forest in Germany, and which (according to his meaning) were 

 not found in any other place, were Reindeer, which he describes 

 but does not name, together with the Alces and Urus, which he 

 both names and describes. The first-named was in form and the 

 varied colour of its hide like a goat, but in size rather larger ; it 

 had branching horns, and these were found with both male and 

 female ; they were longer and more elevated than in any other 

 known animal*. 



That Caesar here means the Wild Reindeer is evident to every 

 zoologist. In another place (vi. cap. 20) he speaks of the half- 

 savage Germans, in his time, as using the reindeer skin for 

 clothing t- Thus did the Reindeer at least exist in Germany in 

 the historic period, which has also been denied. The second 

 animal found in the Hercynian forest was the Alces, and the 

 third was the Urus. The last-mentioned (cap. 28) was, according 

 to Csesar, so colossal that it was only a little less than the 

 elephant; in its external appearance, colour and form, it re- 

 sembled the tame ox, but it had much larger horns, &c. It is 

 thus possible, and more than possible, that Caesar's third Hercy- 

 nian animal was the same as the three which formerly lived 

 contemporaneously in Scania. But to assume with Pusch, that 

 Caesar's Urus was not the flat-foreheaded Urox, but the convex- 

 foreheaded Bison, would be to reject without reason what Caesar 

 expressly alleges of the likeness of the Urus to the tame ox, 

 both in outward appearance, form, and enormously large horns ; 

 for it is certain that the Bison never can be said to be, " specie 

 et colore et figura tauri; >} neither could a Roman, who was ac- 

 customed to see the large-sized, long-horned cattle in Italy, of 

 which we have representations even from Caesar's period, find 

 the horns of the Bison so enormously large as Csesar describes 

 those of the Urus% ; for the Bison, to judge from the cores on 

 the skulls that have been found among us, even in its wildest 

 state (at least in Caesar's time), could never have had such large 

 horns as the Italian tame ox. Besides, it is a fact which cannot 

 be disputed, that Roman writers who speak of the Urus (by some 

 called Bubalus ; which appellations were synonymous, according 

 to what Pliny expressly tells us, Hist. Nat. viii. 5) exactly cha- 

 racterize him by his large, wide, open horns, his strength and 

 swiftness, while the characteristic of the Bison is long hair on 

 the back, neck, or under the chin ; and also that no one Roman 



* It is quite evident that Caesar has confused his remarks on the Reindeer 

 and the Elk, so that at the same period he has inserted something that he- 

 longed to the one and something to the other of these species of animals. 



f " Pellibus . . . rhenonum tegimentis utuntur." 



J " Amplitudine cornuum et figura et specie multum a nostrorum bovum 

 cornibns difFert," Caos. vi. 29. 



Ann. $ Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 2. Vol iv. 18 



