THE BO VINES 359 



taurus. \ti. one specimen found in Britain the length of the face 

 from the frontal ridge between the horns to the tip of the palate 

 was 3 ft. The height of this animal at the shoulder must have 

 been from 7 ft. to 8 ft. As 11 h. from the shoulder to the 

 ground is considered the height of a large elephant, it will be seen 

 that Caesar, in comparing the wild bulls of the Black Forest (which 

 probably stood 8 ft. from the ground) to elephants, was not 

 greatly exaggerating.^ 



The horns of the urus bull of the race found in Britain 

 measured in some examples as much as 38 in. along the outer 

 curve of the horn core, which, allowing for the horny sheath, 

 would give a length of nearly 4 ft. to each horn measured along 

 the curve. In some specimens there was a space of 42 in. in the 

 span of the horns measured across the forehead from tip to tip. 

 In colour the British urus may have been red or it may have 

 been black. It has already been stated that the original colour 

 of the Mauritanian form was probably dun-gray. 



The last urus which survived as a wild animal in Europe was 

 slain in 1627 in the forest of Jaktorowka, forty miles south-west 

 of Warsaw, in Poland. A Httle prior to 1550, Baron Herberstain 

 made, or caused to be made, a picture of a Polish aurochs 

 (possibly of this forest of Jaktorowka), and this picture is pre- 

 served in his book (written in Latin and translated into Italian) 

 on Muscovy and Russia.^ According to Herberstain, the colour 

 of this Polish aurochs was black. On the other hand, there is a 

 great deal of evidence deduced from our domestic breeds to show 

 that one variety of the ancestral ox was red (the common 

 ground colour for oxen and their allies the tragelaphs ; perhaps 

 also for the deer, the giraffe, the chevrotain, the pig, and 

 many more primitive Ungulates). In numerous mammals, 



1 Ccesar, De Bella Gallico, 6th book, p. 26, where in his description the 

 phrase used may be translated : "These {Urt) were little below elephants in 

 magnitude." 



* The Italian version of the work is entitled Commentarii della Muscovia 

 d parimente della Russia, tradotti novamente di latino in lingua Italiana, by 

 Baron S. Herberstain. Venice, 1550. 



