162 
UNGULATES. 
have been a certain amount of crossing with other species, the origin of our 
domestic cattle is certainly to be traced back to the same wild ancestor. 
The aurochs and the half-wild and domesticated cattle of Europe are charac¬ 
terised by their horns being circular in section and placed at the veiy summit of 
the skull immediately over the occiput, as shown in the accompanying woodcut. 
Where they first arise from the skull the horns have their upper border convex; 
and the forehead of the skull is flat or slightly concave, and much longer than 
broad, so that the sockets 
of the eyes are separated 
by a long interval from 
the bases of the horns. 
The tail is of great length. 
The spines of the verte¬ 
brae of the withers are not 
greatly elongated, and thus 
do not form a distinct ridge 
in this region of the body. 
That the wild aurochs 
was an animal of huge 
bulk is proved by the 
skulls and bones found in 
the turbaries, fens, and 
brick-earths of England and the continent. In the skull figured in the woodcut 
the bony cores of the horns have a span of upwards of 42 inches from tip to tip, 
and when these were covered with their horny sheaths the whole could not have 
fallen short of 50 inches. This specimen was obtained from a turbary—that is a 
peat-bog—near Athol; but some of the skulls found in the brick-earths at Ilford, 
in Essex, are of considerably larger dimensions, although from the more forward 
direction of their horns the span between their tips is somewhat less. 
Distribution and The aurochs was pursued and killed by the prehistoric hunters 
Extinction. G f Europe, as we know from the circumstance that skulls have been 
found with the forehead pierced by flint hatchets. The date from which it 
disappeared from Britain is, however, uncertain, although it probably lingered 
longer in a wild state in Scotland than in the southern districts of England. On 
the continent there is evidence that in Julius Caesar’s time the aurochs, or urus, 
was abundant in the Hercynian, or Black, Forest of Germany. Old chronicles also 
prove that in the middle of the sixth century these animals were found, although 
rarely, in the province of Maine; while there is evidence that some of them at 
least were white in colour. In the ninth century Charlemagne hunted the aurochs 
in the forests near Aix-la-Chapelle; while at the close of the following century we 
find the flesh of these animals alluded to in the rolls of an abbey in Switzerland. 
The aurochs was met with during the route taken through Germany by the first 
crusade, in the eleventh century; and that it still lingered in the neighbourhood of 
Worms during the twelfth century is indicated by the mention of the slaughter of 
four individuals in the Nibelungen-Lied. The accounts of conflicts with gigantic 
wild oxen, so rife in classic literature, doubtless refer to the aurochs; and thus 
skull of the aurochs (about E na -t- size).—After Owen. 
