WHETHER EXTINCT BOS URUS AND LIVING AUROCHS ARE THE SAME ? 503 
antecedent to our own ; but was then rather in the same subaqueous condition as 
the low lands of northern Siberia, when the mammoths’ bones were there trans- 
ported into estuaries. Hence, we think, that many of the mammalian remains 
to which we now allude, may have been transported into adjacent lakes and estu- 
aries by rivers, and in some instances carried out great distances to sea from the 
surrounding lands, — the Ural (including a large tract of Permia) and Siberia on the 
east, the Crimea 1 and Caucasus on the south, or the Carpathian Mountains on the 
west. 
But besides these former encompassing lands, there are certain tracts within 
Russia, which though now of no great altitude, are so exempt from debris and drift, 
that it is natural to infer they may have formed low islets in the ancient waters 
which covered the great mass of the present lands. This view we would support 
by an illustration drawn from natural history and the nature of the ground. 
Of all the remarkable quadrupeds which ranged over the former continents, one 
species only now remains alive (and this point even is doubtful 2 ) to connect the 
1 See Demidoff, Voyage dans la Russie Meridionale, vol. ii. The reader will there find an account of the 
remains of bones of mammoth, bos, Ursus spelceus, horse, &c., as interred in a reddish-coloured argillaceous 
drift near Odessa (Terrain Clysmien), which covers the surface and enters into the clefts of the subjacent 
tertiary or steppe limestone. M. Huot, the author of that description, refers this deposit to lacustrine 
waters. He also found the Mastodon angustidens associated with the mammoth at Kamisch Burun, near 
Kertch. These animals lived, of course, in the adjacent high grounds of the Caucasus and Crim;ea (see 
our remarks thereon, p. 304). 
* Notwithstanding the deep interest attached to the Bos Aurochs, which may, we suppose, prove to 
be the only existing remnant of the great quadrupeds of former days, there does not exist a single 
skeleton or stuffed specimen of the species either in France or the British Isles. As far as England is 
concerned, this reproach is about to be removed through the munificence of the Emperor Nicholas, who, 
at the request of Mr. Murchison (graciously supported by His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke Mi- 
chael), has directed that a fine animal, selected from the unique herd now living in the forest called 
Bialavieja, should be killed, and his skin and skeleton sent to the Museum of the Royal College of 
■surgeons. It may not be known, that without a stringent ukase to prohibit its annihilation, the pea- 
santry of Lithuania would long ago have exterminated this noble species. Though we have been led to 
believe in the specific identity of this Lithuanian Aurochs with the extinct Urus (Urus priscus of Bojanus 
and V. Meyer), that opinion is not generally admitted. But we may hope that the question will be set at 
rest, as soon as Professor Owen has the means of testing it. If the living Aurochs be the real descendant 
°f the great fossil animal, it might, judging from the usual difference of size, be considered to have 
degenerated ; though in the Museum at Warsaw, where we have seen three specimens which are there 
preserved, one of them is nearly double the size of the other two. We ourselves procured a very remark- 
able front and horns of the Bos Aurochs, found in the gravel west of Perm with mammoths’ teeth, and 
M. Hommaire de Hell also found a fine head of the same in the steppes between the Sea of Azof and the 
Caspian. 
3 T 2 
