262 
pliist's natural history. 
[Book YIII. 
serpent one hundred and twenty feet in length was taken by the 
Roman army under Eegulus, being besieged, like a fortress, by 
means of balistse and other engines of war.®^ Its skin and jaws 
were preserved in a temple at Rome, down to the time of the 
Numantine war. The serpents which in Italy are known by 
the name of boa, render these accounts far from incredible, for 
they grow to such a vast size, that a child was found entire 
in the stomach of one of them, which was killed on the Yati- 
canian Hill during the reign of the Emperor Claudius.®^ These 
are nourished, in the first instance, with the milk of the cow, 
and from this they take their name.^^ As to the other animals, 
which have been of late repeatedly brought to Italy from all 
parts of the world, it is quite unnecessary to give any minute 
account of their form. 
CHAP. 15. (15.) — THE ANIMALS OE SCYTHIA ; THE BISON. 
Scythia produces but very few animals, in consequence of 
the scarcity of shrubs. Germany, which lies close adjoining 
it, has not many animals, though it has some very fine kinds 
of wild oxen : the bison, which has a mane, and the urus,^ 
This is referred to by many ancient writers ; among others, by Livy, 
E. xviii. ; Florus, B. ii. c. 2 ; Valerius Maximus, B. i. c. 8 ; and Aulus 
GelUus, B. vi. c. 3.— B. 
^2 As Cuvier remarks, it is difficult to conceive what he means by the 
boa of Italy. At the present day, the longest Italian serpents are the 
JEsculapian serpent (a harmless animal), and the " Coluber quadrilineatus 
of Linnaeus, neither of which exceeds ten feet in length. The one here 
mentioned, was probably, as Cuvier suggests, one of the genuine boa or 
python species ; but, as ne says, where did it come from ? and how did it 
get there ? 
85 It is doubtful whether any one ever witnessed a serpent sucking a cow, 
but it seems to have been generally believed, and it is therefore probable, 
that the name of the animal was derived from this circumstance. — B. It 
is still believed of the common snake in some parts of this country. The 
reading primo " has been preferred to trimo," that adopted by Sillig. 
81 Cuvier remarks upon the two animals here mentioned, the bison and 
the urus, that Europe, at the present time, contains only one species of wild 
ox, the bison, or aurochs of the Germans, which still exists, although in 
small numbers only, in the forests of Lithuania. There are, however, fossil 
remains, in different parts of the north of Europe, of other animals of the 
same genus, which may have been the urus of Pliny, and not extinct when 
he wrote. Ajasson, vol. vi. pp. 413, 414 ; Lemaire, vol. iii. p. 365. The 
description by Caesar of the urus of Gaul, Bell. Gall. B. vi. c. 26, seems 
to agree with the remains of the fossil animal, and may, therefore, be con- 
