DISTRIBUTION OF THE EUROPEAN AND CAUCASIAN BISON. 9 



specimens have been forwarded to various Zoological Gardens, 

 and dead ones sent to museums. The specimen in the Tiflis 

 Museum has been already referred to ; one was sent from Bialo- 

 wicza to the Copenhagen museum, and a skin of another, killed 

 by a Berlin animal painter at Bialowicza, was presented by the 

 Czar to the Gottingen Museum. 



In order to become acquainted with new haunts and higher 

 feeding-ground the Bison must have been forced to quit their 

 original haunts many years ago. Probably they were captured 

 in the manner described by Pausanias (x. 13. 2), and transported 

 to Borne to take part in the public spectacles of Domitian. 



Voigt, in his 'History of Prussia' (i. p. 544), states that at 

 that time both Bison and Elk were numerous in the forests of 

 Prussia, and that both were occasionally caught and sold into 

 foreign lands, including Italy. Polish nobles kept them in their 

 parks at Ostrolenka, Warsaw, Zamosk, &c. Frederick III., 

 Kurfiirst of Saxony, sent for Elk and Bison from Lithuania, and 

 established them in various deer-parks, as well as at Berlin. In 

 1089 they were turned out into the unenclosed hunting-ground, 

 but did not nourish, and all attempts to make them do so proved 

 unsuccessful. 



In 1717 two were sent to the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, but 

 they also speedily succumbed. 



The Prince of Pless owns the largest and most important 

 game-preserve in which imported Bison are now to be found. 

 About a century after the last Bison in Prussia had been killed 

 by two poachers in 1755, the Prince of Pless re-introduced the 

 species, sending the Czar some Red-deer in exchange for a three- 

 year-old bull and three cows, which he turned into the great 

 deer-forest of Emanuelsegen, six hundred hectares in extent. 

 By 1874, some twenty years later, they and their descendants had 

 wandered two miles southwards, into the district of Mezenzitz.* 

 Later on fresh blood was introduced by the importation of other 

 animals from Bialowicza. In 1885 the number of the herd was 

 twelve, of which six were bulls, four cows, and two calves under 



* See the Eeport on this park to 1890 by the head forester Wild, in 

 4 Neue Deutsche Jager-Zeitung,' x. p. 235 ; also ' Der Deutsche Jager,' vi. 

 p. 119 ; and ■ Der Zoologische Garten,' vii. p. 350. 



