NORTHERN EUROPEAN MAMMALIA. xxxi 



laws in the wilds of Prussia it is now nearly as important as an article of food as in the 

 middle ages in Britain. The common brown bear also is still to be found in the higher 

 mountains of Central Europe, the Alps and the Pyrennees, and the Jura. 



There are, however, as might be expected, many wild animals to be found in the 

 temperate zone of the Continent which are unknown in Britain in the Historic Period, 

 although, as we shall see in a later part of this work, some of them lived in our island 

 before our history began. The lynx still seizes his prey in the forests of France, Germany, 

 and Russia. The glutton {Gulo borealis), in the latter half of the eighteenth century, 

 was to be found in Saxony and Brunswick, 1 although now the forests of Lithuania are 

 the most southern points that it inhabits. The memorable passage in Caesar's ' Commen- 

 taries ' unfolds to us a group of animals which are now no longer found in the area in which 

 they are described, or the Hercynian forest, 2 which extended from Aix-la-Chapelle to the 

 north-east, and overshadowed North Germany. It afforded shelter to the elk, the great 

 urus, and the reindeer, three animals which were then strange to the eyes of the Romans, 

 and which, therefore, he picks out for description from those more commonly known. 

 The first of these animals still inhabits the colder regions on the shores of the Baltic, in 

 East Prussia, Lithuania, and Hungary. The urus lived in the forests of Aachen in the ninth 

 century, and during the first crusades is incidentally mentioned as living also in Hungary. 

 It became extinet about the fifteenth or sixteenth century. The reindeer is not 

 known in Europe at the present time south of the Baltic, but in 1780 was, according to 

 Pallas, living in the Urals and the Caucasus. As late as the ninth century the bison, or 

 Wissent, or Aurochs, was hunted in the forests of France and Germany, and at the 

 present time it lives on sufferance in Lithuania, preserved by a special edict of the Tzar. 



The Alps and Pyrenees, and the high mountains of South Germany, afford shelter to 

 the chamois and bouquetin, as well as to the marmot. 



The fallow deer was probably introduced into France by the Romans from Africa or 

 Spain, and thence it gradually found its way into Germany and Switzerland. 3 



The Mammalia of Northern Europe. 



The common, or, as it is erroneously called, the Norway rat*, is the only wild animal 

 which has invaded Europe in the Historic Period. It was first observed in Europe in 

 Southern Russia, according to Pallas, about the year 1727, and it is stated to have been 



1 The authorities for these statements will be given under the head of each species in the second Part 

 of this Treatise. 



2 This was the opinion of the late M. Edouard Lartet, whom I consulted on the point. 



3 "Benedict, ad Mensas Ekkehardi, Monachi Sangallensis " (lines 117—136), 'Archaeological 

 Journal,' vol xxi. 



* Bell, 'Brit. Quad.,' 315; Pallas, ' Glires,' p. 91 ; Pennant, 'Brit. Zool.,' i, p. 115; Clermont, op. 

 cit., p. 97. 



