WILD OX AND ITS EXTERMINATION 47 
Considerable discussion has taken place as to whether 
Herberstein ever saw a living aurochs, Dr. Nehring ^ 
being of opinion that he did so during his visit 
to Poland in 1550. From the 8th till 13th July of 
that year Herberstein appears to have been alone at 
Gomolia, and Dr. Nehring thought it probable that 
during this interval he made a trip to the Jaktorowka 
forest to see the tur. Whether he really did so must, 
however, remain a matter of doubt ; although Conrad 
Gesner in the appendix to the second volume of his 
Historia Animalium, published at Zurich in 1554, 
states that Wolfgang Lazius, the publisher of an 
edition of the Commentarii at Basle, assured him 
that the pictures of the aurochs and bison in that 
work were drawn from life. Dr. Nehring has, how- 
ever, pointed out that there would be considerable 
difficulty in sketching an aurochs in the Jaktorowka 
forest, especially if Herberstein himself was not an 
artist. Moreover, Professor T. Noak,^ from a study 
of the engravings themselves, has come to the con- 
clusion that they were drawn from the stuffed skins 
in Herberstein's residence at Vienna. He observes, 
for instance, that there are certain lines in the figure 
of the bison indicating the existence of cuts in the 
skin of the hind-quarters and hind-legs, while a 
piece (as was the practice at that time when animals 
of the chase were killed) appears to have been cut 
out of the shoulder of the aurochs. Again, in the 
bison the wooden beam or plank upon which the 
head was mounted seems to have been inclined at 
much too high an angle, thus abnormally increasing 
^ Uber Herberstain und Hirsfogel, Berlin, 1897, p. 13. 
^ " Die Herberstainschen Abbildungen des Ur und des Bison," 
Landwirtschaflliche Jahrbiicher, Berlin, 1896, p. 921. 
