DISTRIBUTION OF THE EUROPEAN AND CAUCASIAN BISON. 3 



six or seven years old, weigh considerably less. Reports as to 

 the weight of these animals date from a few centuries back, but 

 are very scattered even at the present day. 



Under these circumstances, is it right to assume that a 

 diminution in size has been caused by in-breeding amongst 

 many hundred of these animals in such an extensive area as that 

 of Bialowicza ? 



In our Zoological Gardens the conditions for many of the 

 animals are quite different. Omitting all description of the 

 structural and osteological details, I will only allude to Baumer's 

 Essay of 1824, in which he attributes to the Bison two ribs 

 more than are possessed by the domestic cow. See Owen, Proc. 

 Zool. Soc. 1848, p. 129, and Dolmatoff, ib. iii. p. 48. Ludwig 

 ('Neue Deutsche Jagd-Zeitung,' v. p. 325) and others have written 

 about its horns ('Die Natur,' 1888, p. 215). According to Dr. 

 A. Nehring, Bison europcsus has a shorter and more shapely 

 metatarsus than Bos primigenius* The skulls of their American 

 relative are said to make comfortable seats in Indian wigwams, 

 and those of the Urus and Bison were used by the European 

 pile-dwellers of old ; for, as Victor von Scheffel sings in 

 * Gaudeamus': — 



" If I build my small hut in the open 

 The Aurochs will stamp it to pieces." 



Bison skins were used for clothing in the earliest times, and 

 in Hungary in the 17th century were appropriated to various 

 purposes. 



Wild, the head forester at Pless, observed that the cows were 

 in heat at all seasons and were invariably covered by the oldest 

 bulls. The period of gestation is 274 days, and calves are born 

 at all times of year, doing well even when there is 20° of cold. 



It has often been said that there is such antipathy between 

 the Bison and the domestic cow that they will not interbreed, f 



high trestles, through which passes an iron bar terminated by a large hook. 

 From this hook the deer was suspended by all four legs lashed together, and 

 raised from the ground by a windlass until its weight was indicated on a 

 scale. The game-carrier consists of a couple of fir-poles laid horizontally 

 about a yard apart, with a hammock of strong netting lashed between them. 

 On this the stricken deer was laid and transported." — Ed. 



* ' Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie,' xx. p. 222. 



f Eichwald, * Beschreibung von Littauen,' p. 37. 



b2 



