6362 Notice of the various 



the tail is not tufted merely at the end, but resembles that of the yak, 

 only with the hair much less developed. 



The European bison, visent, wisent or wisund, zubr or (improperly) 

 aurochs, i.e. ure-ox {Bison europaus, Owen; also B. priscus of 

 Bojanus, apud Owen ; Bos Bison, L., apud Nilsson, as distinguished 

 from the gigantic taurine urns of former days). With fourteen pairs 

 of ribs, and therefore five lumbar vertebrae.* Now confined to the 

 great marshy forest of Bialowikza, in Lithuania (believed to be the only 

 remnant of genuine primaeval or purely natural forest still in Europe), 

 but formerly much more extensively diffused, and considered by Owen 

 to be identical with the Bos priscus of palaeontologists, which co- 

 existed with the Elephas priscus of what is now the temperate region 

 of Europe — the remains of which last have been erroneously assigned 

 (according to Dr. Falconer) to E. primogenius, which is the mammoth 

 or Arctic elephant of Siberia. In the European, as compared with 

 the American bison, the peculiar bisontine characters are in every way 

 reduced, or more or less softened down in intensity. For an admirable 

 description of this animal and of its habits, vide Weissenborn in the 

 * Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist.' vol. ii. p. 305 et seq., also Nilsson, id. 2nd 

 series, vol. iv. p. 419 et seq. The bulls emit a powerful musky odour, 

 the chief seat of which is that part of the skin and hair which covers 

 the convexity of the forehead. This is strongest in the rutting season, 

 and is much weaker in the cows. The zubr has an invincible repug- 

 nance to the domestic Bos Taurus, which is not the case with the bison 

 of North America ; which latter will readily breed with domestic 

 cattle, but the European bison never. (The mixed progeny are said 

 to be infertile). The American is also far more tameable. Each has 

 been known to attain about a ton in weight ; but the European bison 

 has greatly degenerated within historic times, and more so if truly 

 identical with the fossil Bison priscus, the horn-cores of which are 

 much longer and straighter, vide Owen's figure of a British fossil skull 

 of B. priscus (Brit. Foss. Mam. and Birds, p. 490), as compared with 

 Nilsson's Scanian sub-fossil skull of the modern type (in Ann. Mag. 

 Nat. Hist. 2nd series, vol. iv. p. 415). The existing zubr of Lithu- 



* This character is not so absolutely constant as is generally supposed ; for a cow 

 zubr, examined by Bojanus, had only 13 pairs of ribs ; and we have the authority of 

 B. H. Hodgson, Esq., for asserting that the Indian humped cattle have occasionally 

 fourteen pairs. That gentleman being detained in the course of a journey through the 

 Tarai, and seeing a number of skeletons of domestic cattle lying about counted the 

 ribs of several of them, and to his surprise observed the occasional variation re- 

 ferred to. 



