EXTIRPATION OF WILD ANIMALS. 
85 
wild ox exists only in a few English and Scottish parks, while 
in Irish hogs, of no great apparent antiquity, are found antlers 
which testify to the former existence of a stag much larger 
than any extant European species. The lion is believed to 
have inhabited Asia Minor and Syria, and probably Greece 
and Sicily also, long after the commencement of the historical 
period, and he is even said to have been not yet extinct in the 
first-named two of these countries at the time of the first Cru¬ 
sades.* Two large graminivorous or browsing quadrupeds, 
the ur and the schelk, once common in Germany, are utterly 
extinct, the eland and the auerochs nearly so. The Nibelun- 
gen-Lied, which, in the oldest form preserved to us, dates from 
about the year 1,200, though its original composition no doubt 
belongs to an earlier period, thus sings: 
dHmr slobc ilje bobgl^ie Higfrib a fobeirt anb aa elk, 
|k smote four stowte urorea anb a grim anb sturbie scjjelk.f 
Modern naturalists identify the elk with the eland, the wisent 
with the auerochs. The period when the ur and the schelk 
became extinct is not known. The auerochs survived in 
Prussia until the middle of the last century, but unless it is 
identical with a similar quadruped said to be found on the 
Caucasus, it now exists only in the Russian imperial forest of 
* In maintaining the recent existence of the lion in the countries 
named in the text, naturalists have, perhaps, laid too much weight on the 
frequent occurrence of representations of this animal in sculptures appar¬ 
ently of a historical character. It will not do to argue, twenty centuries 
hence, that the lion and the unicorn were common in Great Britain in 
Queen Victoria’s time, because they are often seen “fighting for the 
crown ” in the carvings and paintings of that period. 
f gar nacfr slbgcr stljkre. dnen krismt frnf rklp 
Slardjrr ban him. fiat dam grimmm sdjtklj. 
XVI Auentiure. 
The testimony of the Mbelungen-Lied is not conclusive evidence that 
these quadrupeds existed in Germany at the time of the composition of 
that poem. It proves too much ; for, a few lines above those just quoted, 
Sigfrid is said to have killed a lion, an animal which the most patriotic 
Teuton will hardly claim as a denizen of mediaeval Germany. 
