WILD OX AND ITS EXTERMINATION 5 3 
while in 1620 the sole survivor was a cow, which, 
according to the report of 1630, died in 1627. With 
the death of this cow the aurochs, as a wild animal, 
apparently ceased to exist.^ 
There appears, however, to have been still a 
certain number of half-wild aurochs existing in 
enclosed parks or menageries, of which the most 
celebrated was that of Zamosc, in Poland. Testi- 
mony to this effect occurs in a letter from Lemberg, 
written by Count Johann von Ostrorog in 1610, and 
it is probable, although not certain, that some of 
these aurochs were living at least in 1627. 
In summing up the general appearance of the 
aurochs in the 1557 Antwerp edition of his work, 
Herberstein observed that the adult aurochs was 
very like domesticated cattle, but that all were blackish, 
with in some cases at any rate a light line, formed by 
an admixture of white hairs down the back. This is 
confirmed, with the exception of the light line, by the 
Augsburg picture. The accounts of Bonarus and 
Schneeberger refer, however, only to the adult bulls 
being black, with a white dorsal line ; and it is quite 
probable that the cows, like the bull-calves, were lighter 
in colour — in fact, brown instead of blackish brown. 
Both the latter writers refer to the forward direction 
of the horns, which is also shown in the Augsburg 
portrait. On the other hand, Mucante describes 
the aurochs given to Cardinal Gaetano as grey; 
but this, as suggested below, may have been an 
abnormality. 
^ Mr. Hedger Wallace, Trans. Nat. Hist. Soc. Glasgow, ser. ii. 
vol. V. p. 239, states that this aurochs was a tame one in the preserve 
of Count Samoisky, at Saklorowa, but this is not borne out by Dr. 
Mertens, op. cit., who distinctly states, on the authority of Jarocki, 
that it was a wild animal from the Jaktorowka herd. 
