46 THE OX AND TPS KINDRED 
ing that it resembled black domesticated cattle, and 
also that the horns differed in colour from those of 
the bison. 
After the appearance of the anonymous first 
edition of the Cominentarii it would seem that 
Herberstein again visited Poland, where he had 
business with King Sigismund August and the 
Queen-Mother Bona. At the conclusion of the 
negotiations the king presented him with the evis- 
cerated carcase of an aurochs, lacking the skin of the 
forehead, while the queen-mother gave him two 
girdles of tur-hide, which were regarded as of great 
rarity and value. These presents Herberstein took 
with him on his return to Vienna, keeping one of 
the girdles himself, and presenting the other to 
the consort of King Ferdinand. The hide, together 
with that of a bison which he had brought home 
from Poland on a previous occasion, he had stuffed ; 
and the two specimens were eventually placed on 
exhibition in his house at Vienna. Testimony to 
this effect is afforded in a Latin poem of Caspar 
Betius Transslyvanicus, written in the year 1552, and 
published in Vienna in 1558.^ According to this 
poem, the two specimens were mounted in the entrance 
hall of Herberstein's residence in such a manner as 
to show not only the body in connection with the 
limbs and the horns, but also that the aurochs had 
the broader chest and the bison the longer limbs. 
Such details, it has been pointed out by Dr. Nehring, 
could not have been made manifest if the dried and 
flattened skins were hung up, and it may accordingly 
be taken that they were mounted after the rude 
fashion of those days. 
^ The original poem is quoted by Mertens, op. cit. p. 68. 
