132 The Animal-Lore of Shahspeare s Time. 
kinds of wild cattle known at this period. Topsell 
B . (p. 51) describes an animal which he calls a 
Bison, and which he says has been falsely called 
a buffalo by earlier writers. He derives the name from 
Thracia, called in ancient times Bistonia. He says:— 
“ It is generally held for a kind of wild oxe, bred in the northern 
parts of the world, for the most part, and never tamed; as in Scythia, 
Moscovia, Hercyuia, Thracia, and Brussia.” 
He attributes extraordinary strength to the tongue of 
this beast: 
“ For by licking they grate like a file any indifferent hard substance, ' 
but specially they can therewith draw unto them any man or beast of 
inferiour condition, whom by licking they wound to death. The haire 
is red, yellow, or black, their eyes very great and terrible, they smell 
like a moschus or musk-cat, and their mane reacheth over their 
shoulders, shaking it irefully when he brayeth. Their face or forehead 
very broad, especially betwixt their homes. For Sigismund, king of 
Polonia, having killed one of them in hunting, stood betwixt his 
homes with two other men not much lesser in quantity then himselfe, 
who was a goodly, well proportioned, and personable prince.” 
This animal is apparently the European bison, sometimes 
called aurochs , oryx , or bonassus. It is still found in the 
forests of Lithuania and the Caucasus. 
The American bison is described by Francis Lopez de 
Gromara in his General History of the West Indies, 1542 :— 
“ These oxen are of the bignesse and colour of our bulles, but their 
homes are not so great. They have a great bunch upon their fore¬ 
shoulders, and more haire on their fore part then on their hinder part: 
and it is like wooll. They have as it were an horse-mane upon their 
backe bone, and much haire and very long from the knees downwards. 
They have great tuftes of haire hanging downe their fore-heads, and 
it seemeth that they have beardes, because of the great sorte of haire 
hanging downe at their chinnes and throates. The males have very 
long tailes, and a great knobbe or flocke at the end: so that in some 
respect they resemble the lion, and in some other the camell. They 
push with their homes, they runne, they overtake and kill an horse 
when they are in their rage and anger. Finally, it is a foule and fierce 
beast of countenance and force of bodie. The horses fledde from them, 
