imus. 243 



Africa. In the Museum at Lund is a skeleton belonging to 

 this species, in which one of the vertebrae still shows traces 

 of a wound, made, in the opinion of Professor Nilsson, by a 

 flint arrow. Bones of this species have also been met with 

 in ancient tumuli, as well as in the Lake-habitations, and the 

 Kj okkenmoddinga. 



Caesar particularly mentions the urus as occurring in the 

 Hercynian forest ; it is alluded to in the Niebelungen Lied, 

 and, according to Herberstein, it existed in Germany down 

 to the sixteenth century, soon after which it seems to have 

 become extinct, unless, indeed, it be represented by the 

 celebrated wild cattle of Chillingham, and some of our 

 domestic breeds. 



As the practical result of this palaeontological chronology, 

 derived from the mammalia characteristic of the quaternary 

 period, M. Lartet considers that we may establish four 

 divisions in "la periode de 1'humanite primitive, 1'age du 

 grand ours des cavernes, 1'age de Telephant et du rhino- 

 ceros, Page du renne, et 1'age de Faurochs." It is evi- 

 dent, I think, that the appearance of these mammalia in 

 Europe was not simultaneous, and that their disappearance 

 has been successive. The evidence is very strong that the 

 aurochs survived the reindeer in Western Europe, and almost 

 equally so that the reindeer lived on to a later period than 

 the mammoth ori the woolly-haired rhinoceros. But the 

 chronological distinction between these two species and the 

 cave-bear does not appear to be so well established. Admit- 

 ting that the cave-bear has not yet been found in the river- 

 gravels of the Somme valley, which have been so carefully 

 examined, still we must remember that the animal was essen- 

 tially a cave-dweller, and that its absence is, perhaps, to be 

 attributed rather to the absence of caves than to the extinc- 

 tion of the species. Moreover, the bones found in the 

 gravel are very much broken, and some bones of the large 



