THE WILD OX OF EUROPE 295 
with the horns) was preserved in the town-hall at Worms, 
and another at Mayence. Probably both have long since 
perished. 
Seeing that horns are almost unknown in a fossil state, 
it might well have been thought that, with the loss of the 
historic Zabern specimen, the last example of an aurochs- 
horn has disappeared for ever. By a lucky chance, a 
nearly perfect horn of the wild ox has, however, been 
recently discovered in a peat-bog in Pomerania, together 
with a fragment of the bony horn-core on which it was 
supported during life. The specimen has been described 
by Dr. Nehring, and proved to belong unquestionably to 
the aurochs, as distinct from the bison. 
The mention of both aurochs and bison in the preceding 
sentence renders it desirable to allude to a matter which 
has been the cause of considerable confusion and mis- 
conception. Until within the last few years, nearly all 
naturalists regarded these two names aS synonymous, and 
applied them both to the bison; or rather, in many cases 
dropped the latter name altogether, and miscalled the 
animal to which it belongs the aurochs. The same practice 
is largely followed by sportsmen at the present day. 
In old German the wild ox appears to have been called 
indifferently either ur» or auerochs; the former name being 
Latinised by Caesar into Urus. Auerochs, according to the 
usual interpretation, signifies mountain or wild ox; but 
opinions differ as to whether ur has a similar meaning, or 
whether it signifies the old or primeval ox. Be this as it 
may, the wild ox, which may even in Caesar’s ‘time have 
been growing scarce, gradually became rarer and rarer 
during the Middle Ages, till it finally disappeared in the 
first half of the seventeenth century. The name, however, 
still remained among the peasantry of Eastern Europe, and 
