40 
THE OX AND ITS KINDRED 
call ur.^ Reference is also made by Gregorius, Bishop 
of Tours, in the year 573 to the unlawful slaughter of 
a so-called bubalus in the Wasgenwald, the killing of 
such animals being prohibited. Carl the Great is also 
stated to have hunted wild bulls, although no further 
particulars are given. 
Old chronicles mention that in the middle of the 
sixth century wild bulls were found, although rarely, 
in the province of Maine, in France ; and during the 
ninth century Charlemagne hunted aurochs in the 
great forests near Aix-la-Chapelle, while at the 
close of the following century the flesh of these 
animals is alluded to in the rolls of an abbey in 
Switzerland as an article of food. The aurochs was 
met with during the route taken through Germany 
by the first crusade, in the eleventh century ; and 
that it still lingered in the neighbourhood of Worms 
during the twelfth century is indicated by the above- 
mentioned slaughter of four individuals by Siegfried, 
recorded in the " Niebelungenlied," which was published 
in the year 1 200. 
About the same period, that is to say in the year 
1 1 70, we find Hartmann von Aue alluding to the 
occurrence of both aurochs and bison in the forests 
of the Rhine district, where they were from time to 
time hunted by the kings and nobles.^ The trophies 
obtained during these hunts were carefully preserved, 
and there is the testimony of Conrad Gesner, the 
great naturalist of the sixteenth century, to the 
effect that he had seen in the treasuries at Worms 
^ As noticed in ihe ninth chapter, the word biibaliis was probably 
appHed in Italy to buffaloes during the seventh century. 
^ See A. Mertens, Abhandlungen mid Berichte Museum fiir Nature — 
und Hei7natkunde zu Magdeburg, vol. i. p. 60, 1906. 
