504 
IF SO — ITS PRESERVATION EXPLAINED. 
historic sera, or the present outline of the land with that which preceded it. This 
is the Bos Urus (Aurochs), or primaeval ox, whose bones are so frequently associated 
with those of the mammoth in different parts of Russia and many parts of Europe. 
But if the species be the same, how has this exception been made, and how have 
herds of these oxen been preserved in a living state ? Looking at the forest ot 
Bialavieja 1 in Lithuania as the only locality in which this species now exists, and 
seeing that it is not far from the edge of the southern granitic steppe, we cannot 
avoid theorizing on a contingency by which some of these creatures may possibly 
have been preserved. That granitic steppe, the rocks of which we know to be of 
the highest antiquity, since they have even afforded materials for the construction 
of some adjacent Silurian strata, is in many parts so completely devoid of all 
superficial covering, and so entirely differs in that respect from the thickly- 
overspread tracts upon its north and south, as to justify the inference, that it was 
never depressed beneath the waters since the beginning of the palaeozoic sera, but 
escaped the submersions which affected all the surrounding regions of Russia in 
Europe. Some individuals of the Bos Urus may therefore, we conceive, have been 
dwellers in this granitic ridge until the retirement of the surrounding waters 
enabled them or their descendants to repeople the new jungles and forests of the 
fresh-formed ground, and thus we could explain, by reasoning from geological ap- 
pearances, how it happens that they are now found living in the forests of Lithu- 
ania. Attaching, however, no great value to this speculation, which may prove 
useless, if the living species is found to be different from the extinct, we leave it 
to naturalists to say, whether, under circumstances of great and probably sudden 
1 Count V. Krasinski, the author of the ‘ History of the Reformation in Poland,’ prepared, at the 
request of our friend Colonel Jackson, a very interesting account of this forest and its inhabitants, from 
which we extract the following data. The forest of Bialawieza (Bialavieja) is in the government of 
Grodno on the river Narevka, and lying between the towns of Orla, Shereshef and Prujany, occupies a 
space of about 29 German, or 145 English square miles (see Map, PI. VI.). Having been an ancient 
hunting-ground of the kings of Poland, it has been preserved in its wildest pristine state. The Aurochs 
(Zubr in the Polish language) was always peculiar to Lithuania, if not to this very forest. According to 
the earliest records, it was clearly distinguished from the native wild ox or Tur (an animal possibly similar 
to the wild oxen of Chillingham in Northumberland), which appears to have been much more common, 
even in the 16th century, than the Zubr or Aurochs. An ancient picture, in the possession of the last 
king of Poland, represents King Ladislaus Jajellcm presenting a live Zubr to the fathers of the Council 
of Constance ! thus proving that it was very rare in the beginning of the 15th century. (See also Mdm. 
Ddscrip. sur la Foret de Bialawieza par le Baron de Brinnen ; published at Warsaw in 1828, at which 
time it was believed that 875 head of Zubrs were still living in the forest.) 
