THE WILD OX OF EUROPE 297 
other remains have hitherto been identified from deposits 
of Roman or later age. It is, of course, possible that it 
may have survived till the epoch in question, or later, in 
the more remote parts of the kingdom, and Prof. Dawkins 
has even suggested that the ¢aur? sylvestres mentioned by 
Fitzstephen, who wrote his “Life of Beckett” in the reign 
of Henry II, as inhabiting the forests round London, 
were aboriginally wild animals. On the other hand, they 
may equally well bave been cattle that had run wild, and 
this is confirmed by Bishop Leslie, of Ross, who stated in 
1598 that the Bos sylvestris of the Caledonian Forest was 
white. 
On the Continent, we have the evidence of Caesar as to 
the co-existence of the aurochs or urus in the Hercynian, 
or Black, Forest with the bison and the elk. And it is 
related how the young German warriors of that time 
prepared themselves for war by hunting and killing the 
fierce aurochs. A remarkable confirmation of the truth of 
Caesar’s statement as to the co-existence of the aurochs 
and bison on the Continent during the period of the Roman 
occupation is afforded by the discovery in Swabia, during 
the widening of a railway in 1895, of two statuettes of oxen 
belonging to the Roman period. They were dug up in loam 
at a depth of nine feet below the surface, and have been 
described and figured by Prof. E. Fraas.* The one, as 
shown by the great elevation and depth of the fore- 
quarters, clearly represents the bison. The other, on the 
contrary, is as evidently intended for the aurochs, The 
horns have been broken off in both specimens, but what 
remains of them agrees in each instance with the form 
they should assume. In stating that both species inhabited 
the Black Forest contemporaneously, it is not meant that 
* “ Fundberichte aus Schwaben,” vol. vii. p. 37 (1899). 
