198 27th report, bureau of animal industry. 
That there were large numbers of them is shown by the numerous 
fossil remains found throughout a wide region. One of the best 
skeletons ever found is that of a female apparently from 6 to 8 years 
of age. The skeleton was dug up in 1887 from the bottom of a 
peat bog at Guhlen, on the shores of Schweiloch Lake, Brandenburg, 
Germany, and is now in the zoological collection of the Agricultural 
High School of Berlin. i 
This skeleton, as described by Nehring (1888), is very similar to 
that of the cattle of the lowland and steppe breeds found in Europe 
to-day, except in such changes as would naturally come about by 
domestication. The horns of Bos primigenius, though slender, were 
long and strong, forming at first a half circle, then extending out- 
ward and a little to the rear. At about the middle they begin to 
turn to the front and end in a point turned a little upward. The 
forehead and face were long and narrow, Avith slightly concave sur- 
faces. The whole cranium was somewhat flattened, the contour lines 
being comparatively straight. Measurements agree relatively with 
those of the wild cattle of Chillingham Park, England. The fore- 
head was long, narrow, and quite flat. The length of the forehead 
was 47 per cent of the length of the entire skull. The size of other 
skeletons of the ur varies from that of our domesticated cattle to 
over 6 feet in height at the withers and to 12 feet in length. 
The first appearance of Bos primigenius was in the Pleistocene 
period, when Europe had a warmer climate than at present. It was 
a contemporary of Bos prisons (the ancestor of the European and 
American bisons). Bos honasus (European bison), the mammoth, 
the Irish elk, and other large animals. Bos prisons was more nu- 
merous before the appearance of Bos primigenius, by which it may 
have been driven out. The remains of Bos primigenius are found in 
all the earlier pileworks of the Lake Dwellers. It was first do- 
mesticated in Neolithic times, and later the Avild form was driven 
out by man. 
There is much evidence to show that the wild ur or urus has lived 
within historic times. It is mentioned by Caesar, Avho saw it, or 
knew of it, as an inhabitant of the Hercynian forest. Seneca 
speaks of both tame and wild cattle. Tacitus and Pliny say that 
the horns of these cattle, used as drinking horns, sometimes held as 
much as 2 urs (12 liters). In the Niebelungen Lied, Siegfried kills 
a wisent (bison) and four ur. In an old chart, made in 1281, the 
urus is said to exist between the upper Duna, the Dnieper, and the 
Carpathians, the same region in which he is thought to haA^e become 
exterminated in the seventeenth century (Beltz, 1896). 
Fraas tells of tAvo Roman statuettes of oxen which were dug from 
a depth of 9 feet in Avidening a railway in SAvabia, in 1895. One 
represented a bison, the other an aurochs. So it is presumed that 
